Book Project Fellows

Amanda Torres is a Puerto Rican writer from Connecticut whose fiction explores themes of identity, the historical record, the diasporican experience, and motherhood. She is committed to breaking down the systemic barriers that have historically kept many stories—especially those by working mothers and writers of color—on the margins. She is a recipient of Glimmer Train’s Family Matters Award and a Sewanee Writers' Conference fellowship, and was a finalist for the Missouri Review’s 2023 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Colorado State University and currently lives in Fort Collins, Colorado with her partner and three children.

Mauricio Ruiz studied piano at the Music Conservatory in Mexico City, holds a B.S. in Computer Science Engineering from ITESM, an MBA from BI Handelhøyskole Oslo, and an MFA in Spanish Creative Writing from the University of Iowa (UI). He's received a UI Graduate Engagement Corps grant to create an artists' residency to raise awareness on consumerism and engage with the Iowa City Landfill, and is collaborating with Jennifer New on a podcast on environmental grief. He's been shortlisted for the Bridport and Fish prizes, and received fellowships from Jentel (WY), OMI writers (NY), Société des auteurs (Belgium), Jakob Sande (Norway), Can Serrat (Spain), and the Three Seas' Council (Rhodes). He's published two short story collections and is currently a grad student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has lived in Belgium, Norway and the US.

Carolina Bucheli Peñafiel is an Ecuadorian writer of fiction and poetry whose work explores themes of identity, nature, migration, and culture. Her writing has appeared in Elipsis, In Parenthesis, and Lone Mountain Literary Society, and has been anthologized by Querencia Press. Her first poetry book, Cinturón de Fuego, will be published this year by Valparaíso Ediciones.

She holds a master’s degree in Creative Writing from Colorado State University and a master’s degree in Latin American Studies from the University of New Mexico. For the past five years, she has taught Spanish and composition at the university level. She previously worked as an associate editor and editorial assistant at the Center for Literary Publishing in Colorado. She currently lives in Quito, where she continues to write and teach.
 

Matt Carroll (he/him) is a writer. His work has appeared in a shoebox in the back of his closet. His fiction explores themes of identity, mental health, Marxism, and other strands of Christmas lights you find in a dusty box once a year. He grew up in a small town in New Jersey, and rode his bicycle to Denver, mostly because he wanted to get out of New Jersey, and he owned a bicycle. He wrote a poem once. He often wonders why bios are written in 3rd person. He is currently working on a fantasy novel with Marxist themes. He is older than he looks, but not older than he seems. No, he doesn’t know what that means. Don’t ask him. Ask him about socialism. He likes that. Or just tell him about yourself. Why does he have to do all the talking? Though he does talk a lot. [sigh]

Stephani E. D. McDow is published in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Day Eight's Diaspora Cafe: DC, The Mid-Atlantic Review (formerly Bourgeon), Still Point Arts Quarterly, Genre: Urban Arts No. 7, and Femme Literati: Mixtape Anthology. Her work is anthologized alongside nationally prominent voices such as Jericho Brown, Lucille Clifton, and Tess Gallagher in Raven Chronicle Press’ Take a Stand: Art Against Hate, winner of the 2021 Washington State Book Award for Poetry. 

Born and raised in Washington, DC, Stephani attended the renowned Duke Ellington School of the Arts. A Tin House Summer Workshop alum and Hurston/Wright Summer Workshop Fellow, Stephani was accepted in the LitFest 2024 Advanced Writer’s Workshop in Fiction with Maurice Carlos Ruffin. Her acceptance and participation in this first Lighthouse workshop prompted Stephani to apply to the Lighthouse Book Project. Since, she has been accepted to Tin House 2025 Summer Workshop and studied with Mat Johnson at the LitFest 2025 Advanced Writer’s Workshop in Fiction. Stephani has a BA in English and Humanities from University of Maryland-GC and has completed some post graduate work and professional development courses. 

Stephani’s novel-in-progress explores the impact of individual lives as well as familial dynamics affected by the raw, branched realities of sexual, physical and emotional abuse. As a sexual abuse survivor from the age 2 through 15 and, again the survivor of sexual assault at the age of 25, her work in community and with the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) has revealed to her the frequency of such occurrences as well as the countless families who’d rather suppress the truth than protect the victimized loved one.  

Stephani was a nonprofit and association leader for fifteen years with expertise in professional development and adult learning; and diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging assessment and strategy. She was diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Antiphospholipid Antibody Disorder and Fibromyalgia in December 2020, and as of September 2021, has been unable to be gainfully employed due to her disability. When not writing, Stephani is resting, devouring novels, tending to her garden, loving on family and snuggling with her Great Dane. 

Gary Garrison was raised in the mountains of Colorado. He has an MFA from Arizona State University and a master’s in journalism from the University of Missouri. He has taught creative writing at ASU and Arizona State Prison. In China and Spain, he taught English in language academies and secondary schools.

His fiction has appeared in a variety of journals and magazines and has been awarded a McGinnis-Ritchie Award and a Swarthout Award. His journalism has earned awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Colorado Press Association. He is currently a journalist in Boulder. He is working on his first novel.

Luisa Geisler is a Brazilian author who has written and published five novels in Portuguese. She has been selected for several significant awards: for instance, in 2011 and 2012, the Prêmio SESC de Literatura, and in 2021, the prestigious Jabuti Award. In 2012, she was chosen by Granta magazine as one of the 20 Best Young Brazilian Novelists and was the youngest author on that list. She has participated in artistic-literary projects such as Serpentine Gallery’s Bridge Commission AudioWalks (alongside authors like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Valeria Luiselli), 89plus (under the curatorship of Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Simon Castets) and Writers Omi residency program at Ledig House in New York. Her translated short fiction and other writings have been published in Argentina, Austria, Bolivia, Chile, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Spain, United States and United Kingdom. Two of her novels (Luzes de emergência se acenderão automaticamente and Quiçá) were translated and published into Spanish in Argentina and Spain respectively. In 2017, Luisa obtained an MA in Creative Process from the National University of Ireland. She currently works as a literary translator in Brazil and has translated from English and Spanish authors such as Virginia Woolf, Joyce Carol Oates and George Orwell. She lives in Albuquerque and is a Master's Candidate at the Department of Portuguese and Spanish at the University of New Mexico.

Camille Brightsmith (she/her) is a writer, musician and activist whose music has been featured in commercials, films, and TV programs including NBC's Life and Friday Night Lights. A Colorado native, she lived in Los Angeles for twenty-five years where she studied opera performance and composing, spent her nights belting angry lyrics as a rock-and-roll front woman, recorded two full-length albums, and worked for over a decade as Telemundo's music director.  Camille has dedicated thirty years of her life to activism, and has served on the boards of several volunteer organizations fighting for food justice, women's and LGBTQIA+ rights. In 2009, Camille focused her songwriting on activism and built bloginsong.com which hosts dozens of songs she wrote and produced to fight the system. Since returning to the mountains of Colorado, Camille has been raising her now teenage twins, teaching music, and working as a can-can dancer. She is currently writing her first novel, a work of historical fiction that celebrates queer, immigrant and sex worker communities–the unsung heroes of Colorado's gold rush. In her free time, Camille enjoys camping, gardening and foraging for culinary mushrooms.

Jihyun Yun is a Korean American poet from the San Francisco Bay Area. A Fulbright Research Fellow and National Poetry Series finalist, her debut collection of poetry, Some Are Always Hungry, won the 2019 Prairie Schooner Prize and was published by University of Nebraska Press in September 2020. She has received degrees in psychology and creative writing from UC Davis and New York University. Her poems have been widely published and anthologized in publications such as Best New Poets, AAWW The Margins, Narrative Magazine, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. She currently splits her time between South Korea and Ann Arbor, Michigan where she is working on her first YA novel.

Ladane Nasseri is a journalist and writer living in New York City. A former Middle East correspondent for Bloomberg News where she led Iran’s news coverage, Ladane has reported for a decade and a half from Tehran, Dubai, and Beirut. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Businessweek, Newsweek, The Nation, The U.K.’s Telegraph and France’s Liberation. In her role as a reporter, Ladane regularly commentated on Bloomberg TV and has moderated panels on Middle East politics for the Atlantic Council and Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. She holds a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University and an MFA in literary and narrative nonfiction from the New School. Ladane’s essay Receding Stories from the Sea was selected by Amitava Kumar for the 2021 Lit Fest Nonfiction Fellow For Emerging Writers at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop and she has been the recipient of scholarships from the New York State Summer Writers Institute and Slice Literary. Ladane has taught creative writing to students from underserved neighborhoods in New York City and is a certified yoga teacher and Zen practitioner.

Selected by publishing expert Shana Kelly, Nami Thompson is an artist-activist who was born and raised in New York. In 1992, she staged a well-attended wedding and later counseled her Barbie dolls in an amicable divorce. Nami is a 2019 Tin House Scholar, recipient of the Boulder County Multicultural Award for Excellence in Public Health, and has received grants from the Boulder County Arts Alliance and Dr. Robin Diangelo in conjunction with Education for Equity. Her craft is informed by three years of study of Commedia dell'Arte and theatre of the oppressed. Nami's work negotiates the struggle between optimism and realism, and it is a search for satisfactory outcomes in a world which offers few, if any. Nami's writing functions as a broad social critique of US American society through the lens of her bicultural upbringing. That is to say, she writes because she's trying to figure out why white people eat dinner so damn early.

Jeneé Skinner was born and raised in Rochester, NY. She has a dual degree from SUNY Brockport in Dance and Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in the Linden Avenue Literary Journal and is forthcoming in Passages North (Spring 2021). She attended a residency at the Iowa Writer's Workshop and received fellowships from Tin House Summer Workshop and Kimbilio Writers Retreat. Currently, she's working on an historical fiction novel that's an epic family saga dealing with Igbo culture, magical realism, the African-diaspora, Christianity, and chattel slavery. When she's not writing you can find her working at the library, watching anime, taking Zumba, cooking, or contemplating if she should get a turtle. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Melissa Alvarado Sierra is a Puerto Rican writer and sailor, and she splits her time between Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. A former travel writer for Lonely Planet, she explored the Caribbean with her mariner husband for years, looking for remarkable experiences in paradise. But the natural disasters and severe economic and political upheavals in Puerto Rico pushed Melissa to use her writing as activism, her work now touching on colonialism, sexism, racism, and social disparities. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Catapult, ZORA, The Caribbean Writer, and The Puerto Rico Review. She wrote a chapter for a book by The New Press about environmental justice in Vieques. Her academic book, La narrativa activista de Rosario Ferré, about feminism and national identity in Puerto Rican literature, is coming out in 2020 from McGraw-Hill Spain. Melissa earned a Master’s in Latin American Literature from the University of Barcelona and an MFA in writing from the Mountainview program at SNHU.

Meg Foley attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she earned degrees in English Literature and Chinese Language and Culture, and then went on to use neither of them. Since graduating, she has worked as a nanny, an advocate for people with disabilities, a paralegal, a manager at a roofing company, and an office administrator, during which time she’s developed a good sense of humor about her past self’s career expectations. When she isn't job hopping, Meg spends her free time working on her first novel, a fantasy.