Emerging Writers
Nonfiction Fellowship
Fellowship judge: Elissa Washuta
Winner: Sarah Kiley, from “To Make Anguish and Still Stay Pretty”
“This essay is so sharp, perceptive, and funny—an incredible voice, a relentless mind pushing and pressing. The author’s meditation on teeth is as unsettling as it should be, and teeth come to feel like a word that becomes warped if you stare at it on the page too long (in the best way).” –Elissa Washuta
Runner Up: Julia Marquez-Uppman, from “An Abrupt Break”
“The writer’s voice is beautiful, and I loved the attention to punctuation, the treatment of dashes like objects.” –Elissa Washuta
Runner Up: Mika Taylor, from “Lingua Franca”
“The writer’s voice pulls me hard into and through the essay and its clear and urgent stakes.”
Distinguished finalists: Anesce Dremen, Nicholas Chun, and Dusty Howard
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Fiction Fellowship
Fellowship judge: Ramona Ausubel
Winner: Marcie Alexander, from “The Quiet Ones”
“Father attempts to dig a swimming pool in a drought-dry backyard. Or is it an alien landing pad? Mother gets folks their driver’s licenses, pays the bills. A camp springs up to watch for aliens. Meanwhile, two children attempt to make an equally impossible connection—to their dad, their mom, the story of home, themselves.” –Ramona Ausubel
Runner Up: Blake Foster-Wagamon, from “Brother and Sister”
“This beautiful story is about the transformations we are supposed to make—into strong men, quiet women, into warriors or homemakers—and the ones we choose instead. A moving piece, mournful and honest.” –RA
Runner Up: Mauricio Ruiz, from “Leopard Seals”
“What captured my attention was the animal bodies in this story and how much they contain all things: the stink, the beauty, the possibility, the experiences past and to come. It’s sexy and weird (always a good thing) and full of real, felt life.” –RA
Distinguished Finalists: Evander Reyes, Hema Padhu, and Mika Taylor
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Poetry Fellowship
Fellowship judge: Eduardo Corral
Winner: Christiana Castillo
"I deeply admire the lyrical freedom in these poems. These poems veer beautifully from confession to confrontation, from English to Spanish and Portuguese, from language to the visual. This elastic approach means each page pulses with craft choices that surprise, linger. I also admire how these poems refute the hatred rotting our society, our language. More than ever, we need poems that actively interrogate what’s been inherited and that make tangible—via craft and imagination—new horizons, new possibilities." --Eduardo Corral
Runner Up: Aimee Herman
“These formally rigorous poems remind us that inventiveness can be lyrical. Both the strange and the ordinary are pressurized, transformed into memorable language and thinking. Time and again, I was struck by the dazzling imagination, by the fruitful tension between the poetic line and the sentence." –EC
Jury Award: Xochitl Portillo
“This writer has a clear project, handle of form and their craft. I love the sequencing of their images and the textual/language shifts/leaps they make throughout their poems. Their language ventures into discoveries/strangeness that keeps me engaged. I'm a fan of this poet!”
Distinguished Finalists: Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi, Naomi Azriel, and Easton Lane
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Veteran Writers Award
Our fellowship judge, a vet and novelist, said of all the finalists, “I enjoyed each one of them for different reasons and all more than meet the quality threshold. A credit to the appeal of Lit Fest, and to the review team there.”
Winner: Reed Kuehn, from “Cheese”
"In elegant, understated prose, the writer explores the generational inheritances of modern military service and the strange, sometimes contradictory notions of 'a good war' in American culture. I thought of Tolstoy's old wisdom that, 'Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way' while reading these pages, and anything that meets the Count's standard deserves praise."
Winner: Laura Joyce-Hubbard, excerpt from “Six Articles for Survival”
“This writer refuses to shy from the messy particulars of life as a woman servicemember going through the perils of SERE School—a grueling rite of passage. With sharp humor and an exact sort of literary directness, these pages immerse and spellbind at the same time.”
Runner-Up: Matt Eidson, from untitled story
“There's a tautness and dislocation to this story that beautifully captures the way combat can burrow itself into psyches, always looming, always lurking, and return to the forefront even years later. The submission's final line—'I'll try again tomorrow'—both inspires and haunts."
Distinguished Finalists: Amrei Blaesing and Katherine Witt
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LARRK Awards for Writers
The LARRK Award provides full and partial fellowships to writers with physical disabilities. Our review team considered all genres and all levels for the award.
Winner: Rachel Nielsen, for her fiction, It Could Have Been Worse.
Runners-Up: Max Miller, for the fiction, Drowned Meaning, & Colleen Welsh, for an excerpt of "Newburyport," from Binnewater Moon
Distinguished finalists: poets Shannon Malloy & Jason Masino, nonfiction writer Nicki Orser, and fiction writers Obe Lynd and Sterling-Elizabeth Arcadia