Vermont Studio Center

Margaret Ray grew up in Gainesville, Florida. She is the author of GOOD GRIEF, THE GROUND (BOA Editions, 2023, winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize) and SUPERSTITIONS OF THE MID-ATLANTIC (2020 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship Prize). Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, Best New Poets, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. A winner of the Third Coast Poetry Prize and a s...

Zara Chowdhary is the author of The Lucky Ones. A multi-hyphenate writer, producer, and educator from Chennai, India, she now lives in Madison, WI. She has an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University and an MA in Writing for Performance from the University of Leeds. She has taught courses in Hindi and South Asian cultures, protest poetry, and creative nonfiction. Zara spe...

Cherie Jones is a Barbadian novelist and short story writer whose short fiction credits include Reflex Fiction, The Feminist Wire, PANK, Eclectica, and BBC Radio 4. She is a former fellowship awardee of the Vermont Studio Centre and the International Writers Programme of the University of Iowa. She is an alum of the MA Writing Programme at Sheffield Hallam University where she was awarded the Arch...

Rigoberto González is the author of 20 books of poetry and prose, and the editor of Latino Poetry, a Library of America anthology. His awards include the PEN/Voelcker Award in Poetry, the Lenore Marshall Prize, the Shelley Memorial Prize, Guggenheim, Lannan, NEA, NYFA, and USA Rolón fellowships. In 2025 he received the Ruth Lilly Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry from the Poetry Foundation....

Sarah Cypher is the author of The Skin and Its Girl (Ballantine 2023), a Stonewall Honor Book also shortlisted for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, where she was a Rona Jaffe Graduate Creative Writing Fellow in Fiction. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, the Washington Post, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, Mizn...

Kurt Caswell is the author of five books of nonfiction, most recently, Iceland Summer: Travels Along the Ring Road, with 35 full-color illustrations by artist Julia Oldham. Winner of a Foreword Indie Silver Medal for science writing, Laika’s Window: The Legacy of a Soviet Space Dog, tells the story of the first animal to orbit the Earth, the Soviet space dog Laika, who flew on Sputnik II in 1957....

Charmaine Wilkerson is a Caribbean-American writer who is originally from New York and has lived in Jamaica and Italy. Her writing frequently explores shifting ideas of home, family and self. She is the author of two novels, Black Cake and Good Dirt, and her award-winning short fiction can be found in various anthologies and magazines. Her debut novel, Black Cake, was adapted for the screen as a m...

Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collections: Scorched Earth (Washington Square Press/Atria, 2024), I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, and Equilibrium (Bull City Press, 2016), selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Clark is a winner of the 2020 Ka...

Marcella Pixley has written five acclaimed novels for young people: Freak, Without Tess, Ready To Fall. Trowbridge Road and most recently, Neshama. Freak received four starred reviews and was named a Kirkus Best Book of the Year, Without Tess was a Junior Library Guild Selection, Ready to Fall was named a Bank Street Best Book of the Year. Trowbridge Road was a Junior Library Guild Selection. It w...

Originally from Bali, Indonesia, Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of four books of poems, most recently A Tinderbox in Three Acts, a Blessing the Boats Selection chosen by Aracelis Girmay (BOA Editions, 2022) and Fire Is Not a Country (Northwestern University Press, 2021). A recipient of the Amy Clampitt Residency, Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize, and the Leeway Transformation Award, her writing has a...

Carolyn Kuebler’s debut novel, Liquid, Fragile, Perishable, was published in May 2024 by Melville House. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Common and Colorado Review, among others, and “Wildflower Season” (Massachusetts Review) won the 2022 John Burroughs Award for Nature Essay. She was a co-founder of the literary magazine Rain Taxi and for the past ten years she has been the editor of...

Mark Wunderlich is the author of four books of poems, the most recent of which is God of Nothingness published by Graywolf Press. His other collections include The Earth Avails, which received the Rilke Prize, Voluntary Servitude, and The Anchorage which received the Lambda Literary Award. Wunderlich has published individual poems in in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New Republic, The Nation, The New...

Emily Bernard is the author of Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine, which was named one of the best books of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews and National Public Radio. Bernard is the winner of the 2020 Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for autobiographical prose. Her previous works include: Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and C...

Maya Marshall is a poet, essayist, editor, and professor. Winner of the 2024 Holmes National Poetry Prize awarded by the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University, Marshall is the author of the poetry collection All the Blood Involved in Love (2022). Marshall co-founded underbelly, the journal on the practical magic of poetic revision. Marshall is the recipient...

Kim Coleman Foote is the author of the debut novel Coleman Hill, named a finalist for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, NAACP Image Award, and Audie Award, and long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Inspired by Kim’s family, Coleman Hill weaves fact and fiction to trace their Great Migration journey from Alabama and Florida to Vauxhall, New Jersey, examining the rarely-heard...

Elisa Gonzalez is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the Norman Mailer Center, W.S. Merwin Conservancy, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Rolex Foundation, and U.S. Fulbright Program. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy...

Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity and Some Say the Lark, which received the 2018 William Carlos Williams Award. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including American Poetry Review, The Believer, Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, A Public Space, and Yale Review and has been honored with fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Elizabeth Murray Artists Reside...

Brendan Shay Basham (Diné) is Tó Ts’ohnii (Big Water) and Bit’ah’nii (Folded-Arms People), born for bilagáana (Irish, Scottish, English, German). A writer, artist, educator, and recovering chef, Brendan was born in Alaska and raised in northern Arizona. He received his MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts, and BA in Liberal Arts from the Evergreen State College. His debut novel, Swim Hom...

Lars Horn is a writer and translator working in literary and experimental nonfiction. Their first book, Voice of the Fish (Graywolf, 2022), won the 2020 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize and the 2023 Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award, and was named an Honor Book for the 2023 Stonewall Israel Fishman Nonfiction Book Award as well as an American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce Selec...

J. Bruce Fuller is the author of How to Drown a Boy (LSU Press, 2024). His chapbooks include The Dissenter's Ground, Lancelot, and Flood, and his poems have appeared at The Southern Review, Crab Orchard Review, McNeese Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Best New Poets 2022, among others. He has received scholarships from Bread Loaf, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Stanford University, wher...

Claire Luchette is the author of Agatha of Little Neon and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree. Claire's fiction and non-fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, VQR, Ploughshares, The New York Times, Granta, Kenyon Review, Glimmer Train, Iowa Review, and Indiana Review. Their story "New Bees" won a 2020 Pushcart Prize. Claire was the 2022-23 Rona Jaffe Fellow at the Dorothy...

Temim Fruchter is a queer nonbinary Jewish writer who lives in Brooklyn, loves saturated color, and believes in queer possibility. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Maryland, and is the recipient of fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Vermont Studio Center, and a 2020 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award. She is co-host of Pete’s Reading Series in Brookl...

Jen Soriano (she~they) is a Filipinx writer and movement builder who has long worked at the intersection of grassroots organizing, narrative strategy, and art-driven social change. Jen has won the International Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction, the Fugue Prose Prize, and fellowships from Hugo House, Vermont Studio Center, Artist Trust, and the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat. Jen is also an...

Kerrin McCadden was the recipient of the 2022 Herb Lockwood Prize for excellence in the arts in Vermont. She is the author of two poetry collections, most recently American Wake (Black Sparrow Press, 2021), finalist for the New England Book Award and the Vermont Book Award. Her poems have appeared in such places as Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal,...

Paul Tran is the author of the debut poetry collection, All the Flowers Kneeling, published by Penguin. Their work appears in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. They earned their BA in History from Brown University and MFA in Poetry from Washington University in St. Louis. Winner of the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize, as well as fellowships from the Poet...