2026 Emerging Voices Fellows and Mentors
PEN America welcomes the 2026 Emerging Voices Fellows. Chisaraokwu Asomugha, Guy Melvin, Jamie Issuh, José Enrique Medina, Liana Fu, Monée Fields-White, Norman Tran, Raesin Caine, Ricardo Pierre-Louis, Sharon S.Y. Lee, and Vanessa Butler, who will each receive $1,500, a professional headshot, one-year complimentary PEN America membership, and partake in a five-month immersive mentorship program that includes virtually accessible creative writing workshops, visits from publishing professionals and established writers, and workshops that emphasize the business of books. This year’s mentors include: Mahogany L. Browne, Reyna Grande, Taylor Harris, Meng Jin, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Willie Perdomo, Divya Victor, Karen Thompson Walke, Nikesha Elise Williams, De’Shawn Charles Winslow,.
PEN received the highest number of applicants in 29 years for this selection process. The final selection committee included Edgar Gomez, author of the memoirs Alligator Tears: A Memoir in Essays and High-Risk Homosexual; Jared Lemus, author of the short story collection Guatemalan Rhapsody, and Remica Bingham-Risher, author of the poetry collection, Room Swept Home.
The following talented writers were 2026 finalists: Donovan Hampton, Grace Jahng Lee, Ivan Zhao, Aishatu Gwadabe, Jasmine Ramirez, Jomart Ormonbekov, Juan Garza, Lorena Ortiz, and Luis Santos.
Fellow
Chisaraokwu Asomugha (California)
POETRY
.CHISARAOKWU. (she/her) is an Igbo American transdisciplinary poet artist and a recipient of a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. Her practice weaves archival text, collage, and film to explore memory and identity in West Africa and its diaspora. She has received fellowship support from Anaphora Arts, The Black Genius Foundation, the California Arts Council, Cave Canem, Macdowell, Vermont Studio Center and Ucross. She received an Honorable Mention for the 2023 Evaristo Poetry Prize from the African Poetry Book Fund. Her work can be found in ANMLY, Beloit Poetry Journal, Indiana Review, Obsidian, and Lolwe. A pediatrician, she earned her MD from Duke University and BA from Stanford University. Learn more about her at www.chisaraokwu.com.
Mentor
Mahogany L. Browne will mentor Chisaraokwu Asomugha.
Mahogany L. Browne is a writer, playwright, organizer, and educator as well as an NY Emmy, NAACP, and Audie finalist. A 2022 Kennedy Center Next 50 Fellow and inaugural Poet-in-Residence at Lincoln Center, her collection Chrome Valley won the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her YA novel was longlisted for the National Book Award. She holds an honorary doctorate from Marymount College.
Fellow
Guy Melvin (New York)
FICTION
Guy Melvin (he/him) was born in Nicetown, Philadelphia, and lives in Brooklyn. A Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, and a Sundress Publications Resident, his fiction has been published in Sundog Lit, ANMLY, A Long House Magazine, and forthcoming in Callaloo. His short story ‘Champagne Pools’ was a 2023 Finalist for Best of the Net. His professional career has focused on youth professional development in underserved communities. He’s currently working on his debut novel. His work can be found www.guymelvin.com.
Mentor
Karen Thompson Walker will mentor Guy Melvin.
Karen Thompson Walker is a New York Times bestselling author of three novels. The Strange Case of Jane O. and The Dreamers were both Belletrist Book Club Picks and Finalists for the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction, and The Age of Miracles was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award and a Goodreads Choice Award. Her work has been translated into 27 languages, and her TED talk about fear and the imagination has been viewed more than 2 million times. She is an associate professor of Creative Writing at the University of Oregon, where she teaches in both the MFA and the undergraduate programs.
Fellow
Jamie Issuh (California)
FICTION
Jamie Issuh (she/they) is a Queer Korean-American Renaissance woman: an artist, creative director, writer, community organizer, performer, and emerging writer whose practice lives at the intersection of tenderness and spectacle. Her multidisciplinary career spans immersive experiences, world tours, and community gatherings with clients including Disney Imagineering, Tyler Childers, Aerosmith, Franco Dragone, Asian Mental Health Project, and the Los Angeles Public Library. Rooted in a lifelong devotion to storytelling, wonder, and generational healing, Jamie is currently at work on her debut novel. You can find her on Instagram @jamieissuh and http://jamieissuh.com.
Fellow
José Enrique Medina (California)
POETRY
José Enrique Medina (he/him) earned his BA in English from Cornell University. His poetry collection Haunt Me won the 2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize, and his second chapbook, Man Without a Skirt, was selected by Ellen Bass as the runner-up for the 2025 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize. His first full-length collection, Only the Dead Let Me Talk This Much, won the 2026 Lambda Literary J. Michael Samuel Prize for Emerging Writers Over 50. His work has appeared in USA Today Hispanic Living Magazine, Los Angeles Review, Best Microfiction 2019, and elsewhere. He is a VONA fellow and the founder of the Chickens & Poetry Residency for Writers. Connect with him on Instagram @MedinaWrites or at MedinaWrites.com.
Mentor
Willie Perdomo will mentor José Enrique Medina.
Willie Perdomo is the author of Smoking Lovely: The Remix, The Crazy Bunch, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon, and Where a Nickel Costs a Dime. Winner of the Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, the PEN Open Book Award, the New York City Book Award in Poetry, and the Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, Perdomo was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Poetry Society of America Norma Farber First Book Award. He co-edited the anthology, LatiNext, and was recently awarded a Letras Boricuas 2024 Fellowship. He teaches at Phillips Exeter Academy and was appointed New York State Poet (2021-2023).
Fellow
Liana Fu (Illinois)
CREATIVE NONFICTION
Liana Fu 傅嘉恩 (they/she) is a queer writer and zinemaker from Chicago. As an interdisciplinary artist inspired by the Cantonese diasporic archive, she plays with photography, collage, and printmaking to explore intimacy, process, and nostalgia. Her writing is supported by Lambda Literary, Tin House, and the Illinois Arts Council. You can find her work in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Margins, Hyphen Magazine, Glass Poetry, and elsewhere. You can find them on Instagram @lettersbyliana.
Mentor
Divya Victor will mentor Liana Fu.
Divya Victor is a Tamil-American poet, essayist, and educator. She is the author of Curb, which won the PEN Open Book Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. She is the recipient of a Creative Capital Award for Kin, her forthcoming collection of essays from Graywolf. She is also the author of Kith, Natural Subjects, and Things to Do with your Mouth. She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Michigan State University, where she is the Director of the Creative Writing Program. She has been a citizen of India, Singapore, and the United States, and is at home in all these countries.
Fellow
Monée Fields-White (California)
FICTION
Monée Fields-White’s (she/her) path to fiction has crossed over several news media including magazines and documentaries. Her work has appeared in Bloomberg Markets Magazine, The Root, Crain’s Chicago Business, Fast Company and American Banker Magazine. She also co-produced the Discovery+ documentary series “Uprooted” (2022) and the Vox Media Studios/Netflix series “Files of the Unexplained” (2024). Currently, she serves as the managing editor of the Los Angeles Business Journal. Her literary work explores the complexities of Black families: the generational secrets, the fragile bonds that hold them together, and the quest for reconciliation with inherited life. With a pen attuned to both nuance and intimacy, she weaves narratives that shed light on the tensions and triumphs of everyday life. She has refined this craft with support from Anaphora Arts, the McCormack Writing Center and PEN America – bringing a commitment to truth, depth and resonance to her literary work. You can find her on social media @bravebird72.
Mentor
Nikesha Elise Williams will mentor Monée Fields-White.
Nikesha Elise Williams is a two-time Emmy award winning producer, an award-winning author, and producer and host of the Black and Published podcast. A narrative strategist by day and journalist always, her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Bitter Southerner, Essence, and Vox. Nikesha’s work has been supported by the Kimbilio Fiction Fellowship, the DeGroot Foundation, and the Tin House Summer Workshop. A Chicago native, she lives in Florida with her family.
Fellow
Norman Tran (California)
POETRY
Norman Tran (he/they) is a queer, neurodivergent Chinese American poet and educator from Los Angeles. Their work is forthcoming in Honey Literary and appears in Tell Me About the Dream (Papaya Press, 2025), The Seventh Wave, Multiplicity Magazine, and Gather. Their writing has been supported by FAWC, Kundiman, Lambda Literary, and Periplus Collective. They are working towards their debut collection, cross-examining Gaysian polyamorous relationships and the patterns that make us love recklessly, silently, exponentially. @norman.nor.woman
Mentor
Diana Khoi Nguyen will mentor Norman Tran.
Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Root Fractures and Ghost Of, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and her video work has been exhibited at Miller ICA. A Kundiman and MacDowell fellow, Nguyen teaches creative writing in the MFA programs at Randolph College and the University of Pittsburgh.
Fellow
Raesin Caine (Massachusetts)
CREATIVE NONFICTION
Raesin Caine (she/her) is a Black, queer, and autistic epidemiologist from Chicago. Her writing has been supported by Lambda Literary, McCormack Writing Center (formerly Tin House Writing Workshop), Abode Press, and Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA). You can find her on Instagram @hey.raesin and http://www.raesincaine.com/.
Mentor
Taylor Harris will mentor Raesin Caine.
Taylor Harris is a writer, wife, and mom of three who lives in Richmond, Virginia. Her work has appeared in TIME, The New York Times, O Quarterly, The Washington Post, Longreads, The Cut, SELF, Romper, Parents, McSweeney’s, and other publications.
Fellow
Ricardo Pierre-Louis (Illinois)
FICTION
Ricardo Pierre-Louis (he/him) is a Chicago based writer and former bookseller with a passion for literacy. He’s working on his debut novel, Cuzzo, which has been developed under the instruction of Lindsay Hunter (StoryStudio’s Novel in a Year Program) and Deesha Philyaw (Storyboard Conference ‘25). He has been awarded a fellowship for the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Summer Writing Conference (‘26) and selected to join the McCormack Summer Writing Workshop (‘26).
Mentor
De’Shawn Charles Winslow will mentor Ricardo Pierre-Louis.
De’Shawn Charles Winslow is the author of In West Mills, a Center for Fiction First Novel Prize winner, an American Book Award recipient, a Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction winner, and a Los Angeles Times Book Award, Lambda Literary Award, and Publishing Triangle Award finalist. He was born and raised in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Fellow
Sharon S.Y. Lee (California)
FICTION
Sharon S.Y. Lee (she/her) is a Chinese and Taiwanese American writer based in San Diego. She is the winner of the 2026 John Steinbeck Award for Fiction and the runner up of Phoebe Journal’s 2026 Spring Fiction Contest. She works as a nonprofit legal services attorney and serves as a board member of San Diego Writers, Ink, a literary arts organization. Currently, she is completing a short story collection titled Isolation Tank. Find her at www.sharonsylee.com or Instagram @sharonwritenow.
Mentor
Meng Jin will mentor Sharon S.Y. Lee.
Meng is the author of the novel little gods and the short story collection Self-Portrait with Ghost. Her short fiction has been anthologized in the Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prizes, and her books have been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner, PEN/Open Book Award, NYPL Young Lions Prize, and the LATimes First Fiction Prize. In 2021 she received a Creative Capital Award. Her next book, My Fake Memoirs, is forthcoming in 2028.
Fellow
Vanessa Butler (California)
FICTION
Vanessa Butler (she/her) is a Mexican American poet and writer from San Diego, California. While her formal education spans across molecular biology and public health, her stories are heavily inspired by the natural world and the public health issues of today’s world. Currently, she is an editor and judge for the Poetry Lighthouse Magazine and her work can be found in Nettle, Killer Nashville Magazine, and the Roi Fainéant Press literature magazines. Additionally, she is a recent winner of the #CBCSummerStory25 flash fiction competition with Curtis Brown Creative, and is working on her debut novel. You can find her on Instagram @vanessanicolebutler and read more about her work here.
Mentor
Reyna Grande will mentor Vanessa Butler.
Reyna Grande is an award-winning author whose work powerfully illuminates the complexities of immigration, family separation, and the pursuit of the American Dream. Her diverse body of work includes her celebrated memoirs, The Distance Between Us and A Dream Called Home, and the novels Across a Hundred Mountains, Dancing with Butterflies, and the historical epic A Ballad of Love and Glory. She amplifies undocumented voices as co-editor of Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Immigration, Survival, and New Beginnings. She has earned numerous accolades, such as the American Book Award, the Premio Aztlan Literary Award, the Luis Leal Award, and the Hummingbird Award in Literary Arts. In May 2026, her new memoir, Migrant Heart: Essays About Things I Can’t Forget, was published in English and Spanish. Grande lives in Woodland, California.