New Literary Project

On May 8th, we gathered to celebrate our 2026 teaching fellows. This year, NewLit had five Bonetti-Bell fellows from and six Iris Starn Fellows from the MFA in Creative Writing Department

We gathered for a happy hour at the home of NewLIt board member James Bell with our fellows along with partners and friends. The fellows reflected on their experience teaching creative writing in classrooms around the Bay Area to students who otherwise might not have had exposure to writing poetry, fiction, and non-fiction before.

See link in on our website for some fun photos and video from the event.
https://www.newliteraryproject.org/whats-new/thats-a-wrap-thanks-to-our-2026-bonetti-bell-and-iris-starn-fellows

New Literary Project Announces Leadership Transition: Founding Executive Director Diane Del Signore to Step Aside After Seven Transformative Years; Vanessa Merina Named Incoming Executive Director

New Literary Project (NewLit), the Bay Area nonprofit dedicated to literary arts, arts education, and free creative writing programs across generations and communities, announced the transition of Executive Director Diane Del Signore after seven years of leadership, with Vanessa Merina assuming the role in mid-June.

Under Del Signore’s leadership, NewLit evolved from an ambitious literary nonprofit founded in 2015 into a nationally recognized force for arts education, social impact, and literary culture.

Read more: https://www.newliteraryproject.org/whats-new/new-literary-project-announces-leadership-transition-founding-executive-director-diane-del-signore-to-step-aside-after-seven-transformative-years-vanessa-merina-named-incoming-executive-director

Victoria Tatum, author of More Than Any River, will be in conversation with Joe Di Prisco, Thurs, May 7 at Orinda Books (Orinda, CA) at 7pm. See link in bio to register for this in-person event.

About MORE THAN ANY RIVER
For those tied to the western landscape who wonder whether we might find redemption in the story of its water during a time of increasing climate extremes, a based-on-true-events tale of family farmers fighting to save the land they steward.

Inspired by true events, this Chinatown-meets–The Grapes of Wrath novel tells the story of California’s Sacramento Delta farmers facing off against agribusiness owners over the massive water tunnel(s) the state plans to build under hundreds of thousands of acres of prime Delta farmland.

Winter 2022-’23 inundated California with as much as three times the average rain and snowfall and pulled the state out of one of its biggest droughts in recorded history. But the truth is that the American West, from the Oregon border down to Mexico, is prone to drought—and in California, the biggest battle for water takes place in the Great Central Valley, where south-of-Delta agribusiness controls every stream feeding into the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. The protagonists of More Than Any River are the family farmers fighting for the Delta, and the antagonist is the big agribusiness controlling its water—but ultimately, the Great Central Valley itself emerges as the central character in this gripping tale of divisive land politics and high stakes.

Erika Krouse, of Colorado, is the eleventh Recipient of the Joyce Carol Oates Prize awarded by New Literary Project. The author receives $50,000. Her most recent publication is a book of short stories, Save Me, Stranger (Flatiron Books). Prize recipients are emerged and continually emerging writers of major consequence—short stories and/or novels—at the relative midpoint of a burgeoning career.

The Prize stands not only as testament to Krouse’s impressive literary accomplishments as a mid-career author, but also as encouragement and support for work to come. The author represents the resilience, power, and diversity of our national literary communities, and unforgettably gives voice, in her resonantly distinctive style, to the most urgent issues of today.

Join us in congratulating Erika Krouse. Read the full press release. See link in bio.

Meet 2026 Jack Hazard Fellow Nicole Lozano Simonsen of Sacramento, CA. 🖊️

Nicole Lozano Simonsen has taught high school English for twenty-two years. Her short stories have appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Washington Square Review, Booth, among other places. Over the years, as she has worked to carve out time for writing, usually in the wee morning hours, she has received support and encouragement from the Tin House Summer Workshop, Community of Writers, and Salamander Magazine, where she won the Fiction Prize in 2021. For fun, she likes to run with her dog, kayak with her husband, and read, of course.

Congratulations, Nicole!

Meet 2026 Jack Hazard Fellow Brittany Rogers of Detroit, MI. 🖊️

Brittany Rogers is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and lifelong Detroiter. Her work has been published widely, including the Academy of American Poets, Lit Hub, The Hopkins Review, Lambda Literary, and Oprah Daily. She is Editor-in-Chief of Muzzle Magazine, co-host of VS Podcast, and the author of the poetry collection Good Dress, a Michigan Notable Book for 2025, and finalist for both the NAACP Image Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry (Tin House, 2024). In 2025, Brittany was awarded the Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award and a Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellowship.

Not only is Brittany a 2026 Jack Hazard Fellow, but we just learned that Brittany is also a 2026 Whiting Award Winner. Amazing.

Congratulations, Brittany!

Meet 2026 Jack Hazard Fellow Luisa Muradyan of Kansas City, MO. 🖊️

Luisa Muradyan is originally from Odesa, Ukraine and is the author of I Make Jokes When I'm Devastated (Bridwell Press, 2025) When the World Stopped Touching (YesYes Books, 2027), and American Radiance (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). She holds a Ph.D. in Poetry from the University of Houston and won the 2017 Raz/ Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Additionally, Muradyan is a member of the Cheburashka Collective, a group of women and nonbinary writers from the former Soviet Union. Additional work can be found at Best American Poetry, the Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, and Only Poems among others.

Congratulations, Luisa!

Meet 2026 Jack Hazard Fellow James Klise of Chicago, IL. 🖊️

For 23 years, James Klise has been the high school librarian at CICS Northtown Academy in Chicago. He’s also a fiction writer whose novels for teens include the Edgar Award-winning mystery "The Art of Secrets" and the ALA Stonewall Honor-winning "Love Drugged." His most recent book, "I’ll Take Everything You Have" (Algonquin Young Readers), was a 2023 Kirkus Best of the Year selection. His short stories and essays have appeared in New Orleans Review, StoryQuarterly, Southern Humanities Review, Bennington Review, Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere. Mr. Klise also leads a popular year-long writing workshop for adults at StoryStudio Chicago, a non-profit writing community.

Congratulations, James!

Meet 2026 Jack Hazard Fellow Ambalila Hemsell of Tacoma, WA. 🖊️

Ambalila Hemsell is a writer and educator from Colorado and South India. She is the author of the poetry collection Queen in Blue. The recipient of a Kundiman Fellowship, a former Writer in Residence at InsideOut Literary Arts in Detroit, and a Pushcart nominee, her poetry can be found in Fairytale Review, Columbia Journal, Narrative Magazine, and elsewhere. Her work focuses on land, motherhood, and radical imagination.

Congratulations, Ambalila!

Meet 2026 Jack Hazard Fellow Emily Cinquemani of Greenville, SC. 🖊️

Emily Cinquemani is the Poetry Instructor at the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities, a public, residential arts high school in her hometown of Greenville, SC, where she also serves as Creative Writing Department Chair.

Her poetry has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in several journals including Third Coast, Copper Nickel, Atmo, Southeast Review, NELLE, Poetry Northwest, Ploughshares, and Colorado Review. In addition to teaching high school students for the past five years, she teaches community writing classes through a local organization called Writeshare and works as a poetry editor for the Adroit Journal. She earned her MFA in Poetry from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Congratulations, Emily!