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Dakota DeFiore (she/her/hers) serves as Red Rock Review’s current Fiction Editor. Her contributions to the journal date back to 2023, when she began as a reader and later became a Contributing Editor in 2024. Since assuming the role of Fiction Editor in 2025, Dakota has enjoyed curating prose selections and collaborating closely with editorial staff and interns. Her editorial aesthetic gravitates toward work that is unique, evocative, and print-ready. She appreciates when emotion and narrative depth are intentionally threaded through authentic dialogue and resonant imagery. Dakota is especially drawn to stories that layer craft techniques and explore identity, the body, and the porous boundaries between the natural and the speculative.

Outside her editorial work, Dakota is a professor of English at the College of Southern Nevada, where she teaches writing and literature. She holds an M.F.A. in Prose Fiction from Mills College (2014) and an M.Ed. in Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum from the University of Oklahoma (2019). Dakota is a mother of two young daughters, appreciates all things music, and is an astrophysics/nature enthusiast (nerd). When she’s not reading, teaching, or making memories with her family, you can find Dakota drafting new creative work or organizing community-centered literary events across Las Vegas.

Katelyn Singh has been curating poems for Red Rock Review as Poetry Editor since 2019. She also tends the partially neglected houseplants that are the RRR social media pages and occasionally corrals the student interns. Her hunt for bold, resonant work favors the balance of emotional depth with precision of language—she prizes poems that risk vulnerability, surprise with sound, employ line breaks unexpectedly, and have a strong connection to form. She wants your poem to break her heart again and again. 

As a Professor of English at the College of Southern Nevada, Katelyn has a deep interest in contemporary and postmodern poetics, often exploring the intersections of identity, language, and form in her creative writing classroom. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and MA in English from the University of Louisville, with poems published in Appalachian Review, Reed Magazine, 45^th Parallel, Passages North, and 580 Split, among others. When she finds a quiet moment, she enjoys cooking with her husband, hiking with her German Shepherds, or following her toddler on whatever adventure the day decides to become.

Megan Padilla began her tenure as Red Rock Review’s Editor-in-Chief in 2025. Prior to moving into this role, she served as the journal’s Managing Editor for 7 years where she oversaw the design and compilation of both the print and online editions. In her new role as Editor-in-Chief, she oversees the journal’s production, curates and approves all content, and is leading a fresh editorial staff which includes full-time editors, faculty readers, and student interns. Megan’s literary aesthetic favors the strange and fantastical. As a reader and editor, she loves to see stories in which poetic language and refined craft merge with speculative elements. She wants to be hooked from page one by an extraordinary setting, a uniquely bizarre voice, or palpable tension—hopefully all three!

In addition to her editorial role, Megan is a professor of English at the College of Southern Nevada where she teaches composition, literature, and creative writing. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University and an MA in English from the University of Nevada, Reno. Her fiction has appeared in Zyzzyva, The Los Angeles Review, Eleven Eleven, and other literary journals. When she’s not writing or teaching, you can find her reading science fiction, walking her two golden retrievers, and exploring the many immersive experiences Las Vegas has to offer.