Athena in Progress

Guilliean's headshot
Guilliean’s headshot

Guilliean Pacheco (she/her) is a Filipino-American full stack writer by day; a raconteuse by night. I refer to my heritage as Filipina adjacent. To be more transparent, I’m an American of Filipino, Chinese, Spanish, German, and French descent.

Born in Oakland, I grew up in Union City and Fremont before our family moved to Modesto. We lived in Modesto until the mid-2000s, then started a brand-new journey in Las Vegas.

My professional background reflects my multipotentialite approach to life. The following are some of the skills I nurture:

bloggingconsultingcreative writing
customer servicefilmmakinggraphic design
hospitalityphotographypodcasting
tech journalismweb designweb hosting

I’m a working writer and editor of color, proudly doing what I have done for over 20 years. I’m a member of AIR, ACES, IWW FJU, and Uproot. I’ve never subscribed to a single outlet for my creativity. Among my credits, I count the following:

  • I took GrubStreet’s “Our Planet, Our Stories: Writing Climate Essays and Op-Eds” in 2023, with the aim to publish the work I generated for the workshop in 2024.
  • I earned my Media Writing Essentials certificate from the New School in 2023.
  • I sat for an Anaphora Arts poetry residency in 2022.
  • I joined the staff at TechTarget in 2022 as an Associate Site Editor.
  • I joined the staff at Epifania Magazine in 2021 as a copy editor.
  • I completed Turner Classic Movies and Ball State University’s online multimedia course, The Master of Suspense: 50 Years of Hitchcock, in 2017.
  • I earned my MFA in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco, focusing on short fiction, in 2016.

For me, writing is about seeing the extraordinary in the mundane. Jack Kerouac, James Baldwin, Emily Dickinson, Walt Disney, Ray Bradbury, Sandra Cisneros, Billy Wilder, Angela Carter, William Shakespeare, Joan Didion, Alfred Hitchcock, Shirley Jackson, and Rod Serling influence my short fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. And not in that order!

I randomly quote Futurama, train mixed-type Pokémon teams, and keep the Tenth Doctor’s sonic screwdriver on my person for those timey-wimey emergencies.

For some fun, here’s my book collection, my movie collection, and my record collection.

Follow me on Threads.