2026-2028 Stegner Fellows
The Creative Writing Program is pleased to announce the incoming 2026-2028 Stegner Fellow cohort in poetry and fiction.
Fiction
Jonathon Atkinson
Jonathon Atkinson is a writer from Northern California. His work has appeared in n+1, New Ohio Review, and Water~Stone Review. He holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, teaches in the Language and Thinking Program at Bard College, and mentors with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.
Katerina Ivanov Prado
Katerina Ivanov Prado received an MFA from the University of Arizona and a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. Her work has appeared in Narrative, Brevity, Catapult, The Rumpus, and Joyland, and has won The Masters Review Emerging Fiction Award, the Narrative Story Contest, and the AWP Intro Journals Award, as well as received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, VCCA, Inprint Houston, Reese’s Book Club, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.
Yi Jiang
Yi Jiang is a writer from Shanghai and Wisconsin. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. She completed her MFA at Vanderbilt University, and has received support from Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She previously worked as an associate editor at BookPage and a systems engineer in healthcare technology, prior to a career shift.
Heidi Kaloustian
Heidi Kaloustian is a writer from Michigan. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was the Fiction Editor of the literary journal The Iowa Review. She has been the recipient of an Avery Hopwood Award in Fiction, a Kresge Fellowship in the Literary Arts, and a Robert J. Schulze Memorial Fellowship for a first novel. She is currently at work on a novel and a collection of stories.
Jiachen Wang
Jiachen Wang is a bilingual writer from Shenyang and Shanghai, China. He holds an MFA in Fiction from Cornell, where he also taught as a lecturer. He has completed the Chinese manuscript of a short story collection titled Stealing Fire and is currently working on its English version as well as a novel. He is also a film director and screenwriter. His English stories have appeared in Meridian, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere.
Poetry
J.L. Chen
J.L. Chen was born in Shanghai, lived in New York for nearly a decade before making her home in Vancouver, Canada, where she writes most mornings and dances into the night. Working in both English and Chinese, she has published poetry and personal essays in ARC Poetry, Literary Review of Canada, Tupelo Quarterly, Northwest Review, PRISM International, Queen's Quarterly, subTerrain, and more. A finalist for the 2025 Robert and Adele Schiff Award (Cincinnati Review) and longlisted for the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize, Chen holds an MFA from the University of King's College and is at work on a poetry manuscript and a memoir. (Instagram @jlchenwrites)
Cheyenne C. Fletcher
Cheyenne C. Fletcher (she/they) is a poet, educator, auntie, and citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She is the recipient of Shō Poetry Journal’s Sita Martin Prize and a 2026 Best New Poets nominee. She received her MFA from the University of San Francisco.
David Gorin
David Gorin is the author of To a Distant Country, selected by Jennifer Chang for the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. His writing received the 2023 Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America and has been supported by MacDowell, Yaddo, and Millay Arts. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a BA, MA, and MPhil in English Literature from Yale University. In recent years he has taught creative writing and literature at the Pratt Institute, Deep Springs College, Stanford Continuing Studies, the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution (via the Yale Prison Education Initiative), Eastern Correctional Facility (via the Bard Prison Initiative), and Yale. He curates the WAVEMACHINE poetry and performance series in San Francisco and is co-editor of The Constant Critic at Fence. Learn more at www.davidgorin.net.
Daniel Lurie
Daniel Lurie is a Jewish, rural writer, from eastern Montana. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Idaho and is co-editor of Outskirts Literary Journal. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pleiades, Gulf Coast, RHINO, Adroit, The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, and other publications. Daniel won the 2026 Mississippi Review Prize, Pinch’s Literary Award, and phoebe’s Greg Grummer Poetry Contest, selected by Diane Seuss. He served as the 2025-2026 Ronald Wallace Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Find him at danielluriepoetry.com
Priscilla Wathington
Priscilla Wathington is a Palestinian American poet and the author of the chapbook, "Paper and Stick". Her poems have appeared in The Adroit Journal, Four Way Review, Prairie Schooner, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She was named a Djanikian Scholar in 2026 and a Tin House Scholar in 2025, and has previously served as a Sam Mazza Writer in Residence at San Francisco State University’s Poetry Center. Wathington is a Senior Poetry Editor at Harbor Review and holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College.