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Meet Our 2021 Emerging Writer Fellows

The nine exceptional recipients of the 2021 The Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowships are Joshua Borja, Gina Chung, Caleb Gayle, Senny George, Jared Jackson, Jen Lue, Mary Wang, Katie Yee, and Na Zhong. Each Fellow receives a $5,000 grant, mentorship with a distinguished editor, and publication in the annual fellows anthology.

The Fellows were selected from an impressive pool of 530 applicants in a blind judging process by writers Nicola DeRobertis-Theye (The Vietri Project), Sidik Fofana (Stories from the Tenants Downstairs), and Erin Somers (Stay Up with Hugo Best).

Each year, the judges panel of The Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowships grant Honorable Mention / Alternate and Honorable Mention to praiseworthy applicants who do not receive fellowships. The panel recommends an alternate in the event that anyone selected as a Fellow is unable to accept the Fellowship. Honorable Mention is considered a significant achievement and we congratulate these applicants.

The following exceptional writers have been awarded Honorable Mention status: Linden Crawford, Sonia Feigelson (Alternate), Amanda Horn, Hannah Kingsley-Ma, JL Akagi, and Shayne Terry.

The Emerging Writer Fellowships are open to all early-career writers residing within the five boroughs of New York City. The Fellowship period began in October 2021 and lasted for 12 months. Along with a $5,000 grant and studio space at The Center for Fiction’s physical location in downtown Brooklyn, the Fellowship recipients work closely with an experienced editor to shape first books for submission, attend group dinners with notable agents, editors, and published writers, and take part in two public readings. In addition, their fiction is included in an anthology that is distributed to agents and editors.

Photos by Roque Nonini

Meet Our 2021 Fellows

  • Josh-5

    Josh Borja

    Josh Borja

    Josh Borja is an educator and writer based in New York City. He has taught with CUNY Brooklyn College, the New York City College of Technology, NYU Shanghai, NYU Washington Square, Legal Outreach, and the Johns Hopkins summer program. His courses have ranged from writing-intensive Physics Laboratory courses, to English Grammar, English Composition, and Writing & Imagination.

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    Gina Chung

    Gina Chung

    Gina Chung is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in Brooklyn, New York. She is the communications manager at PEN America and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School. Her work appears or is forthcoming in the Kenyon Review, Catapult, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Idaho Review, the Rumpus, Pleiades, F(r)iction, and Wigleaf, among others. Her stories have been recognized by the American Short(er) Fiction Contest, the Black Warrior Review Contest, the Los Angeles Review Literary Awards, the CRAFT Elements Contest, and the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest, as well as named Longform Fiction Pick of the Week. She is currently working on a novel about climate change, sea creatures, and loss and a collection of short stories about family, memory, and myths.

  • Caleb

    Caleb J. Gayle

    Caleb J. Gayle

    Caleb J. Gayle writes about the impact of history on race and identity, both in his nonfiction and fiction. Gayle’s writing has been featured in the New York Times magazine, the Atlantic, the Guardian, the Three Penny Review, Guernica (forthcoming), the Harvard Review, Pacific Standard, Time magazine, the New Republic, the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Review of Books, the Daily Beast, and more. Gayle is an author of the forthcoming nonfiction book from Riverhead Books, a narrative account of how many Black Native Americans were marginalized by white supremacy in America. Gayle completed both his MBA and master’s degree in public policy from Harvard Business School and Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government as a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow.

    Photo Credit: Jeremy Castro

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    Senny George

    Senny George

    Senny George is a Bronx-born writer who earned her MFA in fiction writing from Goddard College and her BA in journalism from Syracuse University. Her work has been published in the literary magazines Stone Canoe, Blackbird, and Jabberwock Review.

  • Jared-17

    Jared Jackson

    Jared Jackson

    Jared Jackson is a writer, editor, educator, and arts administrator born in Hartford, CT. He received an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, where he was awarded a Chair’s Fellowship and Creative Writing Teaching Fellowship. His writing has received support from the Tin House Winter Workshop and has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Yale Review, Guernica, Kenyon Review, Catapult, and elsewhere. He has been awarded residencies and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Baldwin for the Arts, and The Center for Fiction. He is currently the Reviews and Interviews Editor at Apogee Journal, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University, and the Program Director of Literary Programs and Emerging Voices at PEN America.

  • Jen-7

    Jen Lue

    Jen Lue

    Jen Lue is a Kundiman fellow and a 2018 – 19 Margins fellow at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. She is the recipient of grants and residencies from VONA/Voices, Millay Arts, Tin House, and Jerome Foundation among others. Her work has been featured in Joyland, the Margins, BOMB magazine, and Sepia Journal. She is a 2021 NYSCA/NYFA fiction finalist and is currently at work on a collection of short stories.

  • Mary-38

    Mary Wang

    Mary Wang

    Mary Wang is a writer and editor based in New York. She leads Miscellaneous Files on Guernica, a series of virtual studio visits in which writers use digital artifacts to talk about their practice. You can find more of her writing on BOMB, the Guardian, Longreads, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Republic, WNYC, and Vogue, among others. Her story “The Child Is A Mother Too” was a finalist for the Missouri Review 2020 Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize.

  • Katie-8

    Katie Yee

    Katie Yee

    Katie Yee is a writer from Brooklyn and the Book Marks Associate Editor at Literary Hub. She holds a BA from Bennington College and has been awarded a Kundiman Mentorship Lab Fellowship. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Epiphany, No Tokens, and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter at @prepartynap.

  • Na-9

    Na Zhong

    Na Zhong

    Na Zhong is a New York-based writer, literary translator, and cultural podcaster. She has written for the Margins, Literary Hub, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Millions, A Public Space online, Catamaran Literary Reader, the Shanghai Literary Review, Brooklyn magazine, Words Without Borders, Asymptote, among other publications. Her work has received recognition from the Tin House Workshop, the Bette Howland Award, the New School Chapbook Contest, the Joan Jakobson Fellowship, and the Pushcart Prize. She is also the co-founder of Accent, a platform dedicated to connecting and supporting Asian diasporic writers. She has recently completed her first novel, which examines a fierce mother-daughter relationship through storytelling.