Emerging Writer Fellowships

Miami Book Fair’s Emerging Writer Fellowships program offers a life-changing experience to fresh literary voices. Through the generous sponsorship of the Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation at the Miami Foundation and the Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation, we are beginning the third cycle to select three program recipients who will enjoy critical mentorship from a nationally established author in their respective genre, as well as a host of other strategic supports.

EWF supports developing writers who demonstrate exceptional talent and promise by providing them with time, space, and an intellectually and culturally rich artistic community. The program’s goal is to actively support these writers – who are working to complete a book-length project within a year – and help them launch their literary careers. Emerging Writer fellows are granted professional experience in arts administration, teaching creative writing, and other opportunities; a $50,000 stipend; and strong literary community support to allow for 12 glorious months of uninterrupted time to craft their works.

FELIPE BOMENY, this year’s Fiction Fellow, is a graduate of the University of Chicago and holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Texas, Austin. His work has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review and Waybill, among other publications. His mentor BRANDON HOBSON, PH.D., is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation Tribe of Oklahoma, received his doctorate from Oklahoma State University. His novel, Where the Dead Sit Talking, was a finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the Reading the West Award, and longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award. He teaches creative writing at New Mexico State University.

Felipe Bomeny

Brandon Hobson, Ph.D.

FLINT, the Nonfiction Fellow, earned an MFA in writing from the School of Critical Studies at CalArts and is a 2022 Lambda Literary Fellow in Nonfiction. She has published in The Offing, Arts & Letters (Unclassifiable Contest winner) and Staging Social Justice, CutBank, among numerous other publications and anthologies. Her mentor ESMERALDA SANTIAGO has authored three groundbreaking memoirs: When I was Puerto Rican and Almost A Woman, which she adapted into a Peabody Award-winning movie for PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre, and The Turkish Lover. Her novels include America’s Dream, national bestseller Conquistadora, and Las Madres.

Flint

Esmeralda Santiago

SIMONE ZAPATA, this year’s Poetry Fellow, is a writer, editor, and educator from San José, California. Her recent work appears in Dilettante Army, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Brink Literary Journal. She has received scholarships and fellowships from Community of Writers, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, Banff Centre, and California Institute of the Arts, where she earned an MFA in creative writing. Her mentor, DIANA KHOI NGUYEN is the author of Ghost Of (2018) which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Root Fractures (2024). Her video work has recently been exhibited at the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art. Nguyen is a Kundiman fellow and member of the Vietnamese artist collective, She Who Has No Master(s). A recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and winner of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest and 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, she currently teaches in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Simone Zapata

Diana Khoi Nguyen