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.

Meet the 2025 Fellows: Writers Shaping the Literary Landscape

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

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

Flint

Esmeralda Santiago

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 VIEVEE FRANCIS is the author of The Shared World; Forest Primeval, winner of the Hurston Wright Legacy Award; Horse in the Dark, winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize; and Blue-Tail Fly. Forthcoming are her fifth volume of poetry, Cleaning the Houses of the Dead, and a memoir, Ugly.

Simone Zapata

Simone Zapata

Vievee Francis

The Miami Book Fair Emerging Writer Fellowships program is supported by The Jorge M. Peréz Family Foundation at The Miami Foundation, the Green Family Foundation, Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation, Tristarr LLC, the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Florida Department of State Division of Arts and Culture.