Season 17 Mentees
AWP celebrates the twenty-four writers selected to participate in the Season 17 session of the Writer to Writer Mentorship Program. We received hundreds of applications for this session. Mentors were each given several strong applications to choose from and selected their own mentees.
a. adenike phillips
Poetry
a. adenike phillips is an NJ poet born in Newark, "Brick City," New Jersey. She says her scientific education informs her writing practice while exploring the menacing histories of transgenerational and collective trauma. When she is not writing, reading, or gardening, you can find her on two wheels cycling through a trail or a busy city street.
a. adenike phillips is working with Tony R. Reith Jr..
Daniela Paraguya Sow
Poetry
Daniela Paraguya Sow is a Filipina & Romanian American poet and an Assistant Professor of English at Grossmont College. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Mixed Asian Media, Amphora Magazine, The Lumiere Review, The Hyacinth Review, and elsewhere. Connect with her at www.danielasow.com
Daniela Paraguya Sow is working with Gustavo Adolfo Aybar.
Elizabeth Galoozis
Poetry
Elizabeth Galoozis's poems have appeared in Air/Light, Sundog Lit, RHINO Poetry, Call Me [Brackets], Sinister Wisdom, and elsewhere. She serves as a reader for The Maine Review and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Elizabeth works as a librarian, lives in southern California, and can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @thisamericanliz.
Elizabeth Galoozis is working with Claire Wahmanholm.
Alice White
Poetry
Alice White is a poet from Kansas City who now lives in rural France. She has received support from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and she is a 2022 Hawthornden Fellow. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Poetry Review, and The Cortland Review.
Alice White is working with Matthew Thorburn.
Genevieve Leone
Poetry
Genevieve Leone has recently returned to the US from China after teaching for several years at NYU Shanghai. Her poems have appeared in Book of Matches, The Hong Kong Review, Meridian: The APWT Drunken Boat Anthology of New Writing, and other print and online journals. She now lives in New York City.
Genevieve Leone is working with Doug Ramspeck.
Bethany Chez
Poetry
Bethany Chez is a poet who graduated from Allegheny College with a BA in English and attended writing workshops in Greece. She went on to receive an M.S.Ed from the University of Pennsylvania. Bethany currently resides near Philadelphia.
Bethany Chez is working with Patricia Clark.
Erin Jin Mei O'Malley
Poetry
Erin Jin Mei O'Malley is a queer Asian adoptee writer based in New York. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Nashville Review, The Margins, The Shade Journal, and others. They are a Roots. Wounds. Words. and Lambda Literary Fellow.
Erin Jin Mei O'Malley is working with David Eye.
Jacqueline Schaalje
Poetry
Jacqueline Schaalje has published poetry and short fiction, most recently in The Comstock Review, The Friday Poem, California Quarterly, and Painted, spoken. She is a translation editor at MAYDAY. She earned her MA in English from the University of Amsterdam.
Jacqueline Schaalje is working with Michael Meyerhofer.
Caitlin Eliza McKenna
Creative Nonfiction
Caitlin Eliza McKenna is a writer, historian, and software engineer from Colorado. She has history theses in the libraries of Reed College and Oklahoma State, and her short stories have found awards and publication with Writing by Writers, Desperate Literature, and Shift. When she's not orchestrating the clean makeup and skincare experience at NakedPoppy, she's crafting her novel about a privileged, pedantic grad student who's haunted by the ghosts of Leland Stanford's family.
Caitlin Eliza McKenna is working with Helen Thorpe.
Hannah Rumsey
Creative Nonfiction
Hannah Rumsey is a Developmental Editor and Coach for Sara Connell Coaching, Inc., which helps entrepreneurs and thought leaders write and publish books. She has written and performed the autobiographical one-woman play 42 Days of Summer and has been published in the short story collection The Tall People and the research journal Medical Problems of Performing Artists. She studied Creative Writing at VCU and Northwestern University and is completing a Certificate in Editing from the University of Washington.
Hannah Rumsey is working with Joanna Rakoff.
Mae Oetjens
Creative Nonfiction
Mae Oetjens (she/her) is a senior studying political science at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. She is originally from a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains and has been influenced by many Appalachian and Virginian writers. She writes fiction and creative nonfiction.
Mae Oetjens is working with Nina Renata Aron.
Katie Bennett
Creative Nonfiction
Katie Bennett is a writer and musician from West Philly (www.katiepbennett.com). Her work has appeared in Lit Hub, and she's a mentor for PEN America's Prison and Justice Writing Program. She's also a workshop leader for Mighty Writers, a Philly-based literary nonprofit. She curates Personal Velocity, a quarterly reading series featuring personal essays by writers who identify as women, nonbinary, and trans.
Katie Bennett is working with Gina Nutt.
Becky Band Jain
Creative Nonfiction
Becky Band Jain is a writer and communications strategist living outside of Washington, D.C. She is the recipient of a bronze Travelers' Tales Solas Award and a Fulbright/French Government English Teaching Assistant Award. She has been published in Newtown Literary and Kveller, with a forthcoming piece in ,Struggle Magazine,, and is completing a memoir. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the New School, an MSc in Gender, Development and Globalization from the London School of Economics, and a BA from Wesleyan University.
Becky Band Jain is working with Jeannine Ouellette.
Brian Watson
Creative Nonfiction
Brian Watson is currently revising and querying his first memoir, Crying in a Foreign Language: the Deity that Answered my Plea. Originally from New York State, he lives in the Seattle area after years in Massachusetts, different parts of Japan, and British Columbia. His essays and book reviews have appeared in Brevity's Nonfiction Blog and Hippocampus Magazine. He is also the author of an article on marriage equality in the US and Japan for JETs on Japan Forum.
Brian Watson is working with Garrard Conley.
Melanie Farmer
Creative Nonfiction
Melanie Farmer is a Central Florida writer and educator who holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Central Florida. She is the winner of a 2019 Intro Journals Award from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) and the 2020 winner of the Hurston/Wright Foundation's Crossover Award in literary nonfiction. Currently, you can find her essays in The Tampa Review and Split Lip Magazine. She recently served as the creative nonfiction fellow at Longleaf Writers Conference and is the director of the Visiting Writers Series at Trinity Prep School. Her award-winning essay "Rolling: A Ladies' Guide to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu" will be published in chapbook form by Burrow Press in early 2023.
Melanie Farmer is working with Lara Lillibridge.
Danielle Tran
Fiction
Danielle Tran is an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, pursuing a BA in English and (if she's feeling spicy) Latin. A life-long Bay Area resident, Danielle can be found serving as an editor for Berkeley Fiction Review, wandering beaches in search of enlightenment, and listening to the Kung Fu Panda 2 soundtrack on repeat.
Danielle Tran is working with Leland Cheuk.
F.M. Deemyad
Fiction
Encouraged by her father at an early age, F.M. Deemyad developed a love of English literature and dreamed of becoming an author. As an avid reader of classic literature as well as outstanding works of contemporary authors, her dream came true with her debut novel, The Sky Worshipers. It covers the era of Mongol invasions of the 13th Century from the point of view of women.
F.M. Deemyad is working with Anika Scott.
Sascha Goluboff
Fiction
Sascha Goluboff received an MFA from Pacific University in 2021. She's published short stories in Funny Pearls, Kitchen Sink Magazine, and Bright Flash Literary Review. When not writing fiction, she teaches community-based learning at Washington and Lee University and spends time with her two sons, her partner, and their two dogs.
Sascha Goluboff is working with Joann Smith.
Chideraa Ike-Akaenyi
Fiction
Chideraa Ike-Akaenyi's short stories on enuresis, trauma, and being bi-racial have appeared in Itanile, Ngiga Review, and Kreative Diadem. She holds a BA in English & Literature and was a finalist for the Awele Creative Trust Prize for Fiction in 2021. An Assistant Editor at Isele Magazine, she divides her time between her day job, seeing wildlife documentaries, and working on her craft.
Chideraa Ike-Akaenyi is working with Lucy Ferriss.
Mack Marsden
Fiction
Mack Marsden is a fiction writer from Oregon and holds an MFA from the University of Maryland. Their fiction has appeared in New England Review, Story Magazine, and Pithead Chapel and received a Pushcart Prize. Mack currently lives in Queens, NY, and is at work on a novel about a non-binary ambient musician and burglar.
Mack Marsden is working with Rachel Beanland.
Hayley Boyd
Fiction
Hayley Boyd's writing has appeared in The Masters Review, decomp, Always Crashing, and elsewhere. She is a single mother living in Portland, Oregon.
Hayley Boyd is working with Anne Leigh Parrish.
Beth Brown Preston
Fiction
Beth Brown Preston is a poet and novelist with two collections of poetry from the Broadside Lotus Press and two chapbooks of poetry. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the MFA Writing Program at Goddard College. She has been a CBS Fellow in Writing at the University of Pennsylvania; and a Bread Loaf Scholar.
Beth Brown Preston is working with Maryka Biaggio.
Brooke Segarra
Fiction
Brooke Segarra is a writer in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA in fiction from The New School and is currently continuing to work on her novel that she began as part of her thesis.
Brooke Segarra is working with Daniel Olivas.
