THE 2026 KWELI EMERGING WRITER FELLOWS
Kweli has been mentoring underrepresented writers since December 2009. Designed to help emerging Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) writers hone their craft, this fellowship provides 11 months of editorial support from Kweli editors along with the following benefits:
-a stipend,
-free enrollment in our annual International Literary Festival and Color of Children’s Literature Conference,
-publication in Kweli Journal,
-VIRTUAL writing retreat,
-admission-free enrollment in three professionally led writing workshops on literary fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry, and
-participation in four public readings
Former Kweli Fellow Delia Selina Taylor wrote about her fellowship experience. “Never has my work been taken so seriously or held with such keen attention and care. For the first time in a long time, my work as a woman of color, and all my intersectionalities, was not only centered, but celebrated, and for that, I am forever grateful to my amazing and talented cohort, the fantastic workshop and masterclass leaders, and the inimitable and gracious Laura Pegram, who created this beautiful community.”
LOUISE CRAWFORD is an Afro-Latina writer based in Brooklyn, NY. A lover of speculative fiction, her writing explores intersectional identity, coming of age, and belonging. She is currently working on her first novel.
DESTINY CROCKETT is a scholar, poet, fiction writer, and visual artist originally from St. Louis, Mo, participating from Brooklyn. She writes about African American culture, gender, class, new materialisms, and humor. She has a short story collection-in-progress, and a debut collection of poems.
DAVINE DEL VALLE is a writer and healer. She is working on a collection of short stories and a memoir.
JUAN CAMILLO GARZA is a Puerto Rican and Mexican poet based in Brooklyn, NY. At times, he's been a construction worker, factory worker, repo man, house painter, and a cook — all of which inform his work. He is working on his first book of poetry, which examines grief, class, and material limits of sentimentality.
EMERSON ZORA HAMSA is a native (Poughkeepsie) New Yorker, Emerson Zora Hamsa is a writer whose work explores the complexities of black sentience. Zora—aka: ze(-i) hamsa—is working on a novel, a play, and an academic manuscript.
LU HAN is a fiction writer born in China and raised in New York. Her work is inspired by her family and explores alternate selves/histories and the unexpected shapes of survival. She is working on a novel and a short story collection.
JAYSEN HENDERSON-GREENBEY is a Queens-bred, Brooklyn-based, Black queer fiction writer. Their fiction explores Black queer subjectivity, gender, love, and family dynamics. They are currently working on a short story collection.
JOLIAMOUR DUBOSE MORRIS is a Black writer and editor born and raised in Jamaica Queens, New York. Her fiction explores the intersections of grief, Black culture, and the connection between love and complicity. She is currently working on a short story collection.
ANA OROPEZA PARRA is a first-generation Chicana writer born in Tucson, Arizona, and a long-time resident of NYC. Her writing is informed by navigating the American experience through layered identities shaped by culture, language, and her life as the daughter of Mexican immigrants. With a professional background in education and librarianship, her work is deeply attentive to story, voice, and collective memory. She explores themes of belonging, intergenerational memory, healing and the in-between spaces where loss, love, and possibility coexist.
RASHEEDA SAKA is a Nigerian American writer and editor from the Mid-Atlantic based in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently at work on a novel.
JANVIEVE WILLIAMS COMRIE is a Panamanian migrant writer based in the Bronx, New York. Her work explores migration, race, memory, and Black diasporic life. She is currently working on a historical fiction project rooted in her family history and Afro-Antillean heritage.
SEVAN is a Middle Eastern-South Asian two-time war refugee born and raised in the Middle East, enculturated in the American South, and currently based in Brooklyn, NY. His writing resists explanatory narratives of culture or identity, focusing instead on what lingers after displacement. Working across fiction and theatre, he examines how humour, tenderness, and self-erasure coexist within survival while questioning the ethics of looking and the cost of being legible. Above all, he is committed to building bridges between cultures, communities, and countries that can bear weight, battling the stereotypes and archetypes that too often pass for understanding. He is currently at work on his second novel.
