2024-2026 Stegner Fellows

The Creative Writing Program is pleased to welcome the incoming 2024-2026 Stegner Fellow cohort in poetry and fiction.

Poetry

Stephanie Horvath 

Stephanie Horvath’s writing has appeared in Bennington Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry Northwest, and Denver Quarterly, among other journals. She is currently at work on a second manuscript of poems and a novel.   

Fatima Jafar 

Fatima Jafar is a writer from Karachi, currently based in New York City. She received her MFA in Poetry from Emerson College, and her writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Wasafiri, The Drift, and more. You can find her on Instagram at @fati_jafar

Weijia Pan

Weijia Pan is a poet and translator from Shanghai, China. He is the author of Motherlands, chosen by Louise Glück for the 2023 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and forthcoming with Milkweed Editions in 2024. He received his MFA from the University of Houston, where he was awarded the Inprint Paul Verlaine Prize in Poetry. His poems have appeared in AGNI, Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Georgia Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere.

D.M. Spratley

D. M. Spratley is a writer from the American South. A Cave Canem Fellow, North Carolina Arts Council Fellow, and William C. Friday Fellow for Human Relations, her work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, The Adroit Journal, Ecotone, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. She studied comparative literature and creative writing at Princeton University and graduated from the MFA program at Hollins University. She has taught writing and literature at Lenoir-Rhyne University, Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art, and as core faculty at the public humanities organization Night School Bar. She is at work on a poetry manuscript, a novel, and a collection of critical lyric essays. Find her online at  dmspratley.com.

Bernardo Wade 

Born & raised in New Orleans, Bernardo Wade tries at poems, catches elbows on the court, & serves as Assistant Editor and Poetry Editor for Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. Though he’s published in a bunch of literary journals no one in his family has ever heard of, they remain proud of him, especially when they are featured in the poems. His first full-length poetry collection is forthcoming from Lookout Books of UNC-Wilmington. Infatuated with EdRoberson's question, he might ask if you "Can you O.D. on life?” Find him online at bernardowade.com. 

Fiction

Rucy Cui

Rucy Cui is a writer from San Jose, California, who has also called Texas, Wyoming, and the south of France home. Her stories have been awarded the Barry Hannah Prize and the Bennington Fiction Prize. Her nonfiction appears in Lonely Planet. A 2024-2026 Wallace Stegner Fellow, she is the recipient of scholarships from the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the Mendocino Coast Writers' Conference, and the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. She is currently at work on a novel.

Vida James 

Vida James is a writer from Brooklyn, NY. She is a 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow and a 2023-2024 Center for Fiction Emerging Writer Fellow. She holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst. Her writing has been supported by Periplus, Storyknife, Tin House, Bread Loaf, MASS MoCA, and the St. Botolph Club Foundation. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Story, New England Review, and elsewhere.

Rogelio Juarez

Rogelio Juárez is a writer from Phoenix, Arizona. He holds an MFA from Cornell University and is currently at work on a short story collection and a novel. His work has appeared in American Short Fiction, J Journal, The Seventh Wave, Zocalo Public Square and elsewhere, he has received support from MacDowell and the Arizona Commission on the Arts.

Sena Moon

Sena Moon is a writer from Seoul, South Korea and a 2024-2026 Wallace Stegner fellow. She holds an MFA degree from University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program and has received awards from Boulevard, Carve Magazine, Hopwoods, and Glimmer Train. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Guernica, The Fiddlehead, and Catapult's 2020 Best Debut Stories, among others. She's currently working on a novel and a collection of short stories. 

Kathleen Wheaton

Kathleen Wheaton grew up in California, studied at Stanford and received an MFA from Boston University. She was a librarian at the New Yorker and then worked for 25 years as a journalist and travel writer in Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Bethesda, Maryland. Her collection, Aliens and Other Stories, received the Washington Writers’ Publishing House Fiction Prize. She is at work on a second story collection and a novel.