Fellowships

Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing offers several annual fellowships. Whether funding students or community artists, we are dedicated to investing in literary artists. By fostering artistic growth and professional development, we aim to nurture future changemakers in the literary arts.

Fellowship for Cultural Exchange in the Literary Arts Recipients for 2024

Maya Chari - The Sen Sisters, Annotated

“Lovely historical look into the background of the three Sen sisters and how their individuality interweaves with the narrator's own family story. The use of footnotes here offers vulnerable and bitingly humorous looks at the intersection of the Sen family, Chari's family, fact, and fiction.” – Phillip B. Williams, 2024 Piper Fellowship Guest Judge

Frankie Concepcion - Writing Myself Home: Funding for the Completion of a Memoir on Filipino Folklore, History, Migration, and Loss

“Spiritual, devastating exploration of faith and the many violences that haunt young girls into womanhood. Interrogates what happens when sexist morality becomes a weapon, making the interior of a girl self the most reliable shield and fragile fortress.” – Phillip B. Williams, 2024 Piper Fellowship Guest Judge

Aida Esmeralda - Una lenta playa de mi matria // or // Huellas de caracol // or// El mar de donde fluye nuestro aliento (A Slow Beach of My Motherland or Seashell Prints or The Sea From Which Our Breath Flows)

“Breathtaking audacity, this work is an anti-colonial call-out echoing J Michael Martinez and Aurielle Marie. Visceral, intelligent, and unflinching work whose slick enjambments/formal play and multi-genre splicing kept me invested. – Phillip B. Williams, 2024 Piper Fellowship Guest Judge

Scholar in Creative Writing Fellowship Recipients for 2024

Judge’s Statement:

“What attracted me to all of these works is how close to "finished" they all felt, not in a way that one has reached an apex in career, rather that one has reached a formidable height that demands space and time for more nurturing. Each brief portfolio made me want to read more pages, learn more about these poetic speakers and curious narrators whose impeccable intelligence and wholly original voices fill a void in me that has lasted for years: a desire for ambition and more risk. I am grateful to have read this work and look forward to watching these writers' artistic endeavors bloom.” – Phillip B. Williams, 2024 Piper Fellowship Guest Judge on the Scholar in Creative Writing Fellowship Recipients

Andrew Hudson     

• Nights of Paper, Days of Glass

Zack Lesmeister     

• AGGOT

Jabini Emad

• Displaced: Stories & Essays

Ames O’Neill

• Belly and Other Stories

Emily Khilfeh

• NABLUS

In 2024, the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing provided ASU students with over $16,000 in funds to pursue creative writing professional development opportunities. Take a look at some of the residencies, fellowships, and more that they’ve attended!

• Ragdale Foundation Residency
• GrubStreet's Muse & the Marketplace Conference
• Abroad Writers’ Conference
• Community of Writers Summer Workshop
• Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference
• Changemaker Authors Conference
• Scifi Economics Residency

The 2024 judge for the Scholar in Creative Writing and the Fellowship for Cultural Exchange in the Literary Arts will be Phillip B. Williams.

Phillip B. Williams is the author of Mutiny, winner of the 2022 American Book Award, and Thief in the Interior, which was the winner of the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a 2017 Lambda Literary award. He is also the author of the chapbooks Bruised Gospels and Burn. He is the recipient of a 2020 creative writing grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2017 Whiting Award, and a 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowship. He serves as a faculty member at Bennington College and Randolph College low-res MFA.