2026 FINANCIAL AID

Will Open Again In September!

WE ARE PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE OUR 2026 WINNERS:

2026 FELLOWship recipients

Tiffany Melanson
Cutleaf / Eastover Press
Fellow

Tiffany Melanson is a poet and arts educator. She is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection Black Abstraction (Eastover Press) and the audio chapbook What Happens (EAT Poems). Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Eco-Theo Review, Cutleaf Journal, Compose Journal, and Bridge Eight Magazine, among others. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets Anthology. She has been the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Hedgebrook Writer in Residence, a Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Writers Workshop, a Bennington Writing Seminars Alumni Fellow, and a Tin House writing resident. She was the Director of Creative Writing at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts for fourteen years where she also served as the faculty sponsor of the student literary journal Élan and co-director of the Douglas Anderson Writers’ Festival. She currently works as a Program Director at a non-profit devoted to equity in arts education.

Susan Finch
Longleaf Prose
Fellow

Susan Finch is the author of the short story collection, Dear Second Husband, from Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her stories have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, Crab Orchard Review, New Ohio Review, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. Her fiction has received several awards, and most recently, she was the winner of the John Gardner Award in Fiction from Harpur Palate. She is a Professor of English and an Associate Dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Maggie Andersen
Longleaf CNF
Fellow

Maggie Andersen is a Chicago-based writer who has published fiction and nonfiction in Electric Literature, Salt Hill, Blood Orange Review, DIAGRAM, the Laurel Review, CutBank, and the Los Angeles Review, among others. She is Associate Professor of English at Dominican University and a founding company member at the Gift Theatre. No Stars in Jefferson Park, her debut memoir, was released by Northwestern University Press in October 2025.

Elizabeth Joy Levinson
Marilyn Harris Teacher
Fellow

Elizabeth Joy Levinson is a high school biology teacher in Chicago. Her poetry has appeared in Whale Road Review, SWWIM, South Florida Poetry Journal, One Art, The Shore, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fiction. She is the author of a full-length collection, Uncomfortable Ecologies, available from Unsolicited Press, two chapbooks: Running Aground (Finishing Line Press) & As Wild Animals (Dancing Girl Press), and a micro chapbook, Thigmonasty (Ghost City Press).

Amy Riddell
Longleaf Poetry
Fellow

Amy Riddell is a retired English professor from Northwest Florida State College in nearby Niceville, Florida, where she taught for almost 30 years. She earned her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing / poetry from The University of Alabama. Her most recent poetry collection is Prayer of Scalpel & Ash, a chapbook from Rockwood Press. She is also the author of a full-length collection, Bullets in the Jewelry Box from FutureCycle Press and the chapbook, Narcissistic Injuryfrom Pudding Publications. Her poems have appeared in The Philly Poetry Chapbook Review, The Inflectionist Review, Rust & Moth, SoFloPoJo, Rat’s Ass Review, Misfit Magazine, Birmingham Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and Black Warrior Review.

Hugh Martin
Celia Baker Veteran
Fellow

Hugh Martin, an Iraq War veteran, is the author of In Country (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2018), The Stick Soldiers (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2013), and So, How Was the War? (Kent State UP, 2010).  His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, The American Scholar, and many other venues. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He is currently at work on a collection of essays interrogating how the military-industrial complex shapes discourses of masculinity, remembrance, and veteran identity. He teaches at the United States Air Force Academy.

2026 SCHOLARship Recipients

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal
Celia Baker Veteran
Scholar

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal (they/them) writes queer, working-class stories, essays, and poems. Their work has been supported by Community of Writers, MASS MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, Sundress Academy for the Arts, and Tin House. Winner of the Plaza Short Story Prize and Finalist for the AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, their fiction can be found in Story, Third Coast, The Masters Review, Fairy Tale Review, F(r)iction, South Carolina Review, and elsewhere. Other writing appears in The Rumpus, Barrelhouse, Hippocampus, New Ohio Review, and additional journals. They are the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology.

JP Legarte
St. Joes Community Foundation Scholar

JP Legarte (he/she/they) is a genderfluid Filipinx American graduate student pursuing the poetry track in Emerson College’s MFA in Creative Writing program. His current project, largely composed of experimental poetry, focuses on colonialism as extinction, the different extinctions that have threatened Filipino/a/x Americans, and how Filipino/a/x Americans have survived and rebelled against these various forms of extinctions materialized by colonialist powers.

He serves as the Community and Grant Development Assistant and a Senior Editor for Brink Literacy Project and F(r)iction and as the Director of Creative Operations and Secretary for Collections of Transience. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Breakwater Review (as a finalist for the 2025 Peseroff Poetry Prize), Rawhead Journal, and the 2025 Mayor’s Poetry Program in Boston. She has received support in the form of scholarships, fellowships, prizes, and/or acceptances from the Martha’s Vineyard Summer Writers’ Conference (1st Place Winner of 2024 Voices of Color Fellowship), Lighthouse Writers Workshop Lit Fest (2025 Emerging Writer Fellowship in Poetry Finalist), Juniper Summer Writing Institute (2025 Juniper Summer Writing Institute Full Scholarship), Kenyon Review Writers Workshop (2023 Kenyon Review Partial Scholarship), and more. You can follow her on Instagram at @jpl091.

Jenna Tyrrell
Marilyn Harris Teacher
Scholar

 Jenna Tyrrell is a writer from the Lower Hudson Valley whose fiction explores the themes of family and memory. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Sarah Lawrence College, where she was an editor and contributing writer for The Sarah Lawrence Literary Review. She currently provides academic support to students with disabilities at a public high school. Her work helps students strengthen their reading and writing skills and develop a positive relationship with literature and learning. In her free time, she is a volunteer submissions reader for One Teen Story. 

Sarah Destin
St. Joes Community Foundation Local Scholar

Sarah Destin is a Ph.D. candidate at Florida State University in Creative Writing-Fiction, and she received her M.F.A. from the University of Washington. She is the recipient of the Edward H. and Marie C. Kingsbury Fellowship Award at Florida State University, and her work has recently appeared in Quarterly West, Bridge Eight, Bennington Review, Mid-American Review, The Pinch, and other journals.

Katherine Liu
St. Joes Community Foundation Scholar

Katherine Liu is a writer from Chicago. She is an MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Wisconsin—Madison and holds a BA from Harvard College.

Angela Williamson Emmert
Marilyn Harris Teacher
Scholar

Angela Williamson Emmert holds an MFA from University of Southern Maine. She is senior poetry editor at Lit Fox Books and a staff reader and poetry editor emerita for Stonecoast Review. Recipient of the Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award and the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, her work appears or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, About Place Journal, Blood Orange Review, MidAmerica, Flying Island Review, Raven Review, Book of Matches Literary Review, and Sky Island Journal among others. A former university instructor, she currently teaches middle school English and lives in rural Wisconsin with her husband and sons.

2026 University-funded scholarship recipients

Divine Byrd
Texas State University
Scholar

Divine Byrd is a queer, Black writer, editor, and attorney from Austin, Texas. She writes primarily Young Adult novels focused on exploring Black ancestral history and culture. 

Charlotte Askew
Texas State University
Scholar

Charlotte is a writer, cowgirl, and former counsellor. She holds a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Psychology from the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, graduating with First-Class Honours and the University Medal. Born and raised in Perth, Western Australia, Charlotte is deeply passionate about mental health and rural communities and often writes about both. In 2024, Charlotte accepted a place in Texas State University’s Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing (Fiction) program and was awarded the W. Morgan and Loue Claire Rose Fellowship, a full scholarship to the program. Charlotte’s writing has been commended in the Lorna McDonald Essay Prize, the Queensland State Library Young Writers’ Award, and earned her a two-week residential fellowship at Varuna, The National Writers House. In 2025, Charlotte’s short story, Somewhere Above the Artesian was awarded second place in the Furphy Literary Award and published in the 2025 Furphy Anthology. Charlotte’s affinity for being out of doors rather than in means it’s likely that you’ll find her riding horses or barefoot in the sunshine when she’s not writing.

Ókólí Stephen Nonso
University of Alabama Birmingham

Ókólí Stephen Nonso (he/him) is a Nigerian writer and first-year graduate student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His poetry has appeared in Feral Journal, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Olney Magazine, Tuck Magazine, Ofi Pres, Brittle Paper, The Shallow Tales Review and elsewhere.
 
He is the 2024 winner of the Muse Journal Award for Best Literary Artist of the Year and a joint winner of the May 2020 Poets in Nigeria (PIN) 10-Day Poetry Challenge. His other honors include first runner-up in the Fresh Voice Foundation Poetry Contest and third prize in the Akuko Magazine Inaugural Prize for Poetry (2021). In 2024, he was also shortlisted for the Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize for Literature. He is also the recipient of the 2025 English Department Achievement Scholarship Award at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In recognition of his growing literary impact, he was profiled in Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2021 by Sweetycat Press.

Elly MacKay
University of Mississippi
Scholar

Elly MacKay is an emerging writer from Madison, Connecticut. Her work is interested in women’s love, the natural world, and the passage of time. She holds a BA in English literature from Stanford University and is currently an MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Mississippi. 

Robin Siegel
University of Alabama
Birmingham

Robin is an English major with a concentration in creative writing at UAB. She enjoys writing poems and memoir stories. She has an orange female cat named Purvis Eugenia Abramson-Siegel. 

Jenny Maaketo
University of Missisippi
Scholar

JENNY MAAKETO (she/her) is a neurodivergent writer, psychiatric nurse, and former professional actress from Austin, Texas. She is currently an MFA poetry candidate at the University of Mississippi, as well as the managing editor for Yalobusha Review. Jenny was a finalist for the 2024 New Letters Editor’s Choice Award and the 2024 Tennessee Williams Poetry Festival Contest, a semifinalist for the 2024 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize and the 2023 Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize, and received a C.D. Wright Memorial Scholarship to attend the 2024 Poetry Program at the Community of Writers. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Post Road Magazine, Pembroke Magazine, Heavy Feather Review, Amsterdam Review, Midway Journal, Cherry Tree, The Florida Review, and elsewhere. Jenny lives in rural Mississippi with her husband, toddler son, newborn daughter, four dogs, two cats, a chicken, and of course, lots of love.

Tatyana Hill
Auburn University
Scholar

Tatyana Hill is pursuing her Master’s in Creative Writing at Auburn University. Her interests include free-verse poetry, botanical imagery, and lush description. As a poet, she has a passion for exploring the intersection between nature and spirituality, inspired by the work of Mary Oliver. Her goal, one day, is to publish her own volume of poetry to share with the world.

Roe Van Derwood
University of South Alabama
Scholar

Anna “Roe” Van Derwood is a proudly queer, mixed-race Latine poet pursuing their M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of South Alabama. Their writing focuses on their lived experience as someone existing on the borders and in the margins of various identity groups. Published poems and nonfiction can be found in Oracle Fine Arts Review and Emerging Writers: An Anthology of Nonfiction, and additional pieces are forthcoming in the 2026 issue of New Plains Review.

Hannah Rhodes
University of South Alabama
Scholar

Hannah Agapé Rhodes is a second-year graduate student at the University of South Alabama. She is pursuing a Master of Arts in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. She currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief for South’s literary magazine, Oracle Fine Arts Review. Hannah received the Angela and Steven Stokes Graduate Fiction Scholarship, which is awarded to an individual who has exhibited impressive skills in the craft of fiction writing. Hannah and her songwriting husband, Dawson Rhodes, are currently in revisions for their original musical, Daughter of Wrath. Her upcoming thesis project is a literary fiction novel about the world of professional wrestling told in a triple narrative. Her prose and poetry has been featured in publications such as Mantis, The Tulane Review, We Did It First, and Oracle Fine Arts Review. In addition to her writing pursuits and academic studies, Hannah teaches Logic to 7th and 8th graders and is active in Mobile’s robust theatre community as a performer, director, stage manager, and part-owner of Eclipse Theatre Company.