Emerging Writer Fellowship in Nonfiction
Fellowship judge: Mark Sundeen
Winner: T. Abeyta, “Calavera”
“What I crave these days is the unexpected, and this piece surprised me at every turn. What begins as a humble grad school application essay veers into the colonization of California, loops around dark family secrets and indigenous bones and a suburban childhood, and by the time the author finishes crocheting this tapestry of mismatched yarns we see she’s no imposter but actually the real thing: a magician.” –Mark Sundeen
Runners Up
Amanda Borquaye, “Yellow Daze”
“We’re tempted to think there’s nothing new to say about grief until someone does it. In these chiseled six pages, sorrow dwells on the tongue, and it’s the things we’ve savored that come rushing back during our unthinkable loss, reminding us that the body feels more deeply than the mind. Devastating.” –M.S.
Ally Kirkpatrick, “The Animal Within the Animal”
“This drew me in with the senses: the crumbling horsehair plaster and the damp and mineral smelling cellar. These memoir excerpts weave a child’s lush impressions with an adult’s harrowing ordeal in a psychiatric ward after a traumatic birth with the surprising wise kindness from a neighbor. The author finds—and creates—an ache of beauty in all of it.” –M.S.
Distinguished Finalists: Christina Berke, Tamar Haviv, and Jenny Henderson
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Emerging Writer Fellowship in Fiction
Fellowship judge: Megha Majumdar
Winner: Mika Taylor, from “Her Boy”
“In a 1960s lab, the main character, Margaret, works as a scientist responsible for teaching a dolphin to comprehend the English language. With this fascinating premise, the pages offer challenges and complications that push Margaret to figure out peculiar yet urgent questions: Is she the dolphin's mother or lover? Do her supervisor and fellow scientists, most of them men, understand the intricacies of gender dynamics as it relates to the experiment? Does she have a life outside the water-filled lab? Is her real life, looming in the future, with a married partner and children, truly more real than her time with the dolphin? These pages excel at conjuring an environment of pervading strangeness while never losing sight of what they want us readers to think about—ethics, relationships, and the boundary between laboratory experiment and real life.” –Megha Majumdar
First Runner Up: Hannah Fritz, from “Missing”
“Underneath gorgeous and textured descriptions of processing bushels of apples into applesauce and apple butter, these pages hold a new mother's anxiety, hope, and love. The main character, Emily, is caught between love for her husband, vanished at war, and love for a new man, and in this moment of unease and uncertainty finds herself returning to what is steady and unshakeable—her adoration for her baby, and her task at hand of processing many, many apples before they go bad. These pages beautifully and subtly bring together the various emotional truths Emily confronts.” –Megha Majumdar
Second Runner Up: Masha Shukovich, “The Invisibles”
“A child's love for and awe of his enchanting and mysterious grandmother, Baba Lena—who, unintimidated during wartime as bombs fall, soothes children with Romani folktales and eats their fears at night so they wake up refreshed and fearless—animates this incredibly moving story. Surprising and complex elements throughout the story, such as a downed plane's parts being carted away by local residents to reinforce their own houses, encourage us to think about the place of humor and spirited response amid war's grim assault.”
–Megha Majumdar
Distinguished Finalists: Megan Ritchie, Charles Stephens, Annie Trinh, Ray Wise, and Mikheala Woodward
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Emerging Writer Fellowship in Poetry
Fellowship judge: Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Winner: Sydney Mayes
“I selected this submission for the way it blurs history, inheritance, and interiority with a voice both commanding and tender. The poems move with a sonic richness and cultural clarity that feel both ancestral and immediate—mythic in scope, yet grounded in the textures of lived experience––as it threads life through time with equal parts reverence and defiance. This is work that doesn’t seek permission; it bears witness, remembers, and reimagines with authority and grace.” –Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Sydney Mayes is a poet from Denver, Colorado. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Atlantic, Poets.org, The Hopkins Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Poet Lore, ONLY POEMS, Gulf Coast Journal, Obsidian, Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly and Prairie Schooner. Mayes won the 2021 Iowa Chapbook Prize for their chapbook You Look Just Like Your Mama. In 2024 she was selected by Roger Reeves as a finalist for the Furious Flower Prize, Marilyn Chin as a finalist for the Adrienne Rich Award and honored as the inaugural ONLY POEMS Poet of the Year. Mayes is a two time Pushcart nominee and Executive Editor of Nashville Review. Mayes is an MFA Candidate in Poetry at Vanderbilt University and can be found on Instagram: @sydney_gabrielle_mayes
Runner Up: Mia Nelson
“[Mia Nelson’s] work unfolds with aching clarity, precision, and emotional depth, weaving intimacy, memory, and self-reckoning into poems that shimmer with vulnerability and hard-won grace.” –Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Special Mention: Shelby Pinkham
“These poems are innovative, dynamic, and of singular voice. This poet deserves to be in the learning environment of their choosing.” –Review panelist notes
Distinguished Finalists: Chrstiana Castillo, Quinn Franzen, Laura Kenney, JP Legarte, and Iggy Shuler
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Veteran Writers Award
The Veteran's Writing Award covers the full cost of tuition for an advanced weeklong or weekend workshop for a combat veteran, thanks to funds donated by Prevent & Prevail.
Fellowship Judge: Benjamin Hertwig
Winner: Enrique Gautier, “From Sea to Shining Sea,” and other pieces
“With formal dexterity and linguistic vigor, the author mashes together images of the world with the imprint that experience leaves on both body and mind. The writing feels chaotic, intentionally so, but harnesses a controlled momentum that forces the reader to sit still and reckon with the irreconcilable. This is writing to which I will return.” –Benjamin Hertwig
Enrique Gautier is a BIPOC disabled veteran, poet, educator, photographer, and community advocate whose work explores themes of resilience, cultural identity, and healing. A 2024 MFA graduate from Naropa University, Enrique currently teaches at Red Rocks Community College across multiple English Department courses while also serving as Lead Instructor for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Course at the Law Enforcement Academy.
Enrique's poetry has appeared in publications including Bombay Gin, Veterans Life Magazine, All the Lives We Ever Lived Anthology, and the forthcoming So Long: The Anthology of Poet Warrior Vol III. His debut poetry collection is forthcoming in Spring 2026, examining the intersection of Erasure Poetry, Epigenetics, Supreme Court Decisions, and Mystical Realism. He also has an upcoming essay to be released in The War Horse, which uses memoir to analyze his relationship with dogs.
After serving in the United States Navy from 2006-2019 as a Legalman Chief and Combat Lifesaver during Operation Enduring Freedom, Enrique has devoted himself to veteran advocacy through his roles as Junior Vice Commander at VFW Post 1 and co-director of its Creative Writing Program. His work has earned multiple recognitions at the Eastern Colorado VA Creative Art Festival, including Best in Show.
Follow him on Instagram and TikTok @OEFPoet.
Winner: Matt Gallagher, excerpt from Daybreak
“With understated confidence, the writer confronts the social entanglements and confusion of a localized war with global implications. The Americans here are both sojourners and soldiers of fortune, and the minutiae of life before war--the bus rides, the blurred motivations, the sleeping and waking--are presented with keen detail and care.” –Benjamin Hertwig
Matt Gallagher is the author of four books, including the novels Daybreak and Youngblood, a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He’s covered the ongoing conflict in Ukraine as a correspondent for Esquire and Arrowsmith Journal, with other work appearing in World Literature Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Electric Literature, The Paris Review, ESPN and Wired, among other places. A U.S. Army veteran of the Iraq war, Matt holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia University and lives with his family in Colorado.
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LARRK Awards for Writers
The Larrk Lit Fest Fellowship covers the full cost of tuition for an advanced weeklong or weekend workshop for a writer with a physical disability who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend an advanced workshop. The LARRK Lit Fest Fellowship is made possible through the generous support of The LARRK Foundation.
Shelby Pinkham
Iggy Shuler
Talea Anderson