
Literary Arts is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2025 Oregon Literary Fellowships.
Literary Arts received 479 applications from writers and 24 applications from publishers for the 2025 fellowships. Out-of-state judges spent several months evaluating these applications, using literary excellence as the primary criterion. Four of the fellowships this year were funded by the Oregon Arts Commission.
Since 1987, Literary Arts has honored over 900 Oregon writers and publishers, and distributed more than $1 million in fellowships and award monies through the Oregon Book Awards & Fellowships program.
The 2025 Oregon Literary Fellowship Recipients will be honored at the 2025 Oregon Book Awards ceremony on April 28, along with the winners and finalists of the 2025 Oregon Book Awards. The ceremony will be hosted by Omar El Akkad.
Oregon Literary Career Fellowships
In 2025, Literary Arts awarded two Oregon Literary Career Fellowships of $10,000 each.
Erica Berry of Portland (nonfiction), Oregon Literary Career Fellowship

Erica Berry (she/her) is the author of Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear (Flatiron, 2024), which won the Oregon Book Award for creative nonfiction and was shortlisted for the Pacific Northwest Book Award. Her essays, which often explore the intersection between feelings and the natural environment, appear in The New York Times, Orion, The Yale Review, The Guardian, and Outside, among other publications. A contributing editor at Orion, she is on the 2025 writing faculty at Summer Fishtrap, and a Fall 2025 Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington.
Alfred Jung Lee of Marion County (nonfiction) , Writer of Color Oregon Literary Career Fellowship

Alfred Jung Lee (he/him) is a writer and seasonal farm worker. He is currently working on a book of literary nonfiction that has received support from MacDowell, where he will be a fellow-in-residence in spring 2025, as well as from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, where he was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economics and Business Journalism. His reporting and essays have previously appeared in The Information, Los Angeles Review of Books, NPR and Wilson Quarterly.
Oregon Literary Fellowships
Literary Arts awarded fellowships of $3,500 to 13 writers and 2 publishers. Oregon Literary Fellowships are intended to help Oregon writers initiate, develop, or complete literary projects. Fellowships are also awarded to support Oregon’s independent publishers, small presses, and literary magazines.
FICTION
Zoë Ballering of Portland, Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship

Zoë Ballering’s (she/her) debut collection of stories, There Is Only Us, was selected as the winner of the 2022 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and published by the University of North Texas Press. Her short stories are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review and Story Magazine and have appeared in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Hobart, and Craft. Zoë holds an MFA in creative writing from Western Washington University and currently works as a Senior Assistant Dean of Admission Communications at Reed College.
Chelsea Bieker of Portland, Laurell Swails and Donald Monroe Memorial Fellowship

Chelsea Bieker (she/her) is the author of three books, most recently the national bestselling novel, Madwoman, a Book of the Month club pick the New York Times calls “brilliant in its depiction of the long shadows cast by domestic violence,” and named a best book of the year by NPR, Oprah, Elle, and others. Her first novel, Godshot, was longlisted for The Center For Fiction’s First Novel Prize and named a Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection, Heartbroke, won the California Book Award. She is the co-creator of The Fountain.
Jordan Jacks of Portland, Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship

Jordan Jacks’ fiction has appeared in The Iowa Review, The Yale Review, Electric Literature Recommended Reading, and elsewhere. He was the 2015-16 James C. McCreight Fellow in Fiction at The Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and has taught at UW-Madison, St. Albans School, The Cleveland Institute of Art, and Washington University in St. Louis, where he earned an MFA in Fiction.
Victor Lodato of Ashland, Laurell Swails and Donald Monroe Memorial Fellowship

Victor Lodato is a playwright and the author of the novels Edgar and Lucy, Honey, and Mathilda Savitch, winner of the PEN USA Award for Fiction. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and The National Endowment for the Arts, his stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, and elsewhere. His novels have been translated into sixteen languages. Born and raised in New Jersey, he has lived in Oregon since 2010.
Chris Stuck of Portland, Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship

Chris Stuck (he/him) is the author of Give My Love to the Savages: Stories (Amistad/HarperCollins). He was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and the Oregon Book Award, and is a Pushcart Prize winner. His work has been published in various literary journals.
NONFICTION
Katherine Cusumano of Portland, Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship

Katherine Cusumano (she/her) is a reporter and essayist. Her writing about the intersections of pop culture and the outdoors has appeared in the New York Times, Outside Magazine, and other national publications. For her work, she has received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences, the Spring Creek Project, and Hypatia-in-the-Woods. She holds an MFA in nonfiction from Oregon State University and a BA in comparative literature from Brown University
Vix Gutierrez of Portland, Women Writers Fellowship

Vix Gutierrez (she/her) has lived and learned in more than twenty countries, but her life as writer began in Portland. Her work has appeared in The Common, Subtropics, The Timberline Review, Nailed, and elsewhere. Her essay, “Dark Sky City” was a notable in The Best American Essays 2021. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Florida.
POETRY
Christine Barkley of Eugene, Poetry Community Fellowship

Christine Barkley (she/her) is an Irish-American writer whose work addresses intersecting patterns of chronic illness, neurodivergence, generational trauma, and biological legacies. Her poems and essays can be found in The Journal, Yale Review, West Branch, Massachusetts Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Manhattan Review, Poet Lore, Portland Review, the Pinch, and Missouri Review, among others. Christine was a finalist for the 2024 Perkoff Prize. She is the Associate Poetry Editor of The Dodge, and a poetry reader for TriQuarterly.
Brittney Corrigan of Portland, C. Hamilton Bailey Fellowship

Brittney Corrigan (she/her) is the author of the poetry collections Daughters, Breaking, Navigation, 40 Weeks and most recently, Solastalgia, a collection of poems about climate change, extinction, and the Anthropocene Age (JackLeg Press, 2023). Brittney was raised in Colorado and has lived in Portland, Oregon for more than three decades, where she is an alumna and employee of Reed College. Her recent debut short story collection, The Ghost Town Collectives, won the 2023 Osprey Award for Fiction from Middle Creek Publishing.
jessamyn duckwall of Hood River, Leslie Bradshaw Fellowship

jessamyn duckwall (they/she) is a queer, autistic poet living in Hood River. They received an MFA in Poetry from Portland State University, and are currently working on their first full-length poetry manuscript. They teach writing at Columbia Gorge Community College, and they also sometimes teach community education poetry workshops. Their work has appeared in local lit mags like Old Pal, Kithe, and Scavengers, as well as farther-reaching publications such as Josephine Quarterly and Radar Poetry.
Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong of Portland, Writer of Color Fellowship

Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong (she/her) was a 2024 Tahoma Literary Review Fellow at the Mineral School Artist Residency, and her writing has been featured in or is forthcoming from The Adroit Journal, Best New Poets, ONLY POEMS, Pleiades, and Poet Lore, among others. Kaylee has also received support from Fine Arts Work Center and Brooklyn Poets. She graduated from Columbia University in 2024 and works as a preschool teacher.
YOUNG READERS
Amelia Díaz Ettinger of Summerville, Edna L. Holmes Fellowship in Young Readers

Amelia Díaz Ettinger (she/her) is a Latinx BIPOC poet and writer. Her books include Learning to Love a Western Sky, Speaking at a Time /Hablando a la Vez, These, These Hollow Bones, and two chapbooks Fossils in a Red Flag and Self Dissection.
Amelia’s poetry and short stories have been published in anthologies, literary magazines, and periodicals.She has an MS in Biology and an MFA in creative writing. Her literary work is a marriage between science and her experience as an immigrant.
DRAMA
Iván Cantú-Villarreal of Hillsboro, Walt Morey Fellowship

Iván Cantú-Villarreal (he/him) is a Mexican writer/director born in Monterrey, Nuevo León, México. In 2001 at eleven years-old he immigrated to Dallas, Texas with his mom and brother due to a lack of opportunity in their home country. As a culmination of award-winning projects he led as writer/director that were recognized in both national and international film festivals, an opportunity to join the team that would bring his idol’s Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio to the big screen presented itself which led him to move his life to Portland, where he’s continued to grow his career as a writer/filmmaker.
PUBLISHERS
Fuente Fountain Books of Portland

Fuente Fountain Books is an independent small trade press that specializes in publishing progressive and bilingual feminist multicultural books (poetry, fiction, non-fiction, memoir, translation). Their first title, Adela Zamudio: Selected Poetry & Prose translated from the Spanish by Lynette Yetter, was a finalist for the 2023 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.
Some People Press of Portland

Some People Press publishes autobiographies by currently and formerly incarcerated people and art, fiction, and nonfiction books. The autobiographies comprise the Same Times series whose first title was released in June 2024. The 2025 publication schedule includes three more titles in the series. Portland Art Museum commissioned the press to write, design, and publish a monograph by painter David Rosenak in 2023. In 2025, the Press launches “100 in 1,” a series of 100-page books created in one day by emerging and established artists.
Fellowships to writers of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry were judged by a panel consisting of Scott Gloden, author of The Great American Everything; Ellen Wayland Smith, author of The Science of Last Things: Essays on Deep Time and the Boundaries of the Self; and Kweku Ambibola, poet and author of Saltwater Demands a Psalm.
The judge for young readers literature was author Shannon Gibney, author of Dream Country. Playwright Lisa D’Amour judged in drama. The fellowships for publishers were judged by Jeremy M. Davies, Editor-in-Chief, Coffee House Press.