We’re thrilled to introduce the 2025 Oregon Literary Fellowship Recipients with individual features on our blog. Out-of-state judges spent several months evaluating the 400+ applications we received, and selected thirteen writers and two publishers to receive grants of $3,500 each. Literary Arts also awarded two Oregon Literary Career Fellowships of $10,000 each. The 2025 Fellowship recipients were recognized at the 2025 Oregon Book Awards Ceremony on April 28, and featured at a public reading event on July 8 at Literary Arts.
Chris Stuck (he/him) is a 2025 Oregon Literary Fellow in Fiction and the recipient of an Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship. Chris 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.
Q & A WITH LITERARY ARTS
What excites you the most about receiving an Oregon Literary Fellowship?
There are so many good writers in Oregon that being chosen for a fellowship is a huge honor. I was a recipient in 2019 and since I moved to Portland in 2007 I’ve always kept track of who receives fellowships. They’re always such good writers, judged by esteemed judges, that I just feel lucky to be in their company and to be recognized by a great organization like Literary Arts.
How would you describe your writing process or creative practice?
Continuous. It never ends. And I don’t want it to. I think it’s very important for me to stay in that creative part of my brain pretty much all the time if I can. I’m happier and more productive and present in the world when I do. So, if that’s happening for me, then I’m basically writing all the time, revising, considering, thinking of new ideas. The process is to just keep going. Get ideas down on paper or a screen so that I can make them better. If I get stuck, I lower my standards a hair and just push forward, knowing I can fix and will have to fix every word I put down. Realizing what my workflow or process is and trusting it has made writing a lot easier. In the beginning, it’s not going to be good. In the middle, it’ll be a little better. If I get to the end, then I really, really like it and I’m kind of high from the accomplishment. That’s what I’m always chasing. And knowing where I am in that process alleviates angst and impatience and eventually creates finished work.
What authors or books have shaped you the most as a writer?
There are so many. Books I’ve loved and not loved. They all have an impact and tell what works for my aesthetics or not. But favorites are James Alan McPherson, Sigrid Nunez (A Feather on the Breath of God and The Friend are amazing) Dana Spiotta, Don DeLillo, Jennifer Egan, just to name a few.
Are there any Oregonian writers you look to for motivation or inspiration?
There so many good writers in Oregon, Portland especially. Mat Johnson, Theodore Van Alst, Lidia Yuknavitch, Kevin Sampsell, Jon Raymond, Kimberly King Parsons, Charles D’Ambrosio, Chelsea Bieker, Leni Zumas. I love them all.
What projects are you working on right now?
I’m currently in novel mode. I just finished a novel that is on submission to publishers. And now I’m back on the horse, trying to finish another. So on and so on. I’ve realized this is how my life will go until I take that last long nap.
Do you have any advice for future applicants?
Send the work you’re most connected to and excited about. Readers can tell. If you don’t get the fellowship, keep applying. I applied for five years straight before I received one. That goes for anything, submitting to literary journals or agents. Just keep sending. Keep making new work. You’ll find your people eventually.
WRITING SAMPLE EXCERPT
We met at The Only Ethiopian Restaurant in Town. He was already sitting in a booth, the only person in the whole place. He was looking down at a laminated menu, and as I approached, I realized we were a perfect match. We looked alike, the thick black-framed glasses, the high-top fade, the hip-hop clothes, the groomed beard. Right when I got to the table, he looked up and said, “Ricky?” He stood, and we did the bro hug and gave each other dap a little awkwardly. I was reminded of the movies about Black women’s love lives that my mother made me see with her when I was a kid. I remembered sitting in a theater full of Black women as their deepest feelings were confirmed on the big screen. I finally understood that sensation. I realized I’d been waiting to exhale this entire time. So, I finally did.
He said he was from back east, The Chocolate City, and I said I had a few cousins who lived there. When he heard I was from The Blackest City, he said he had cousins there, too, who’d gone to The Coolest Black College in America and ended up staying in the area. We nodded and smiled. “That is what’s up,” he said.
The server, an older Ethiopian man, took our order, which just so happened to be the same thing, the vegetarian plate with the customary injera bread. He looked at Calvin and then me and asked if we were twins, or at least brothers.
We both looked at him, surprised. “No, why do you ask?”
“Because you look identical.”
Calvin and I smiled at each other said thanks.
The old man sort of looked behind us, as though we had something on our necks, as though the tags on our shirts were sticking out. Then we watched him shuffle off.
Calvin said he’d been in town a few months longer than me and had gone on a couple Black friend meetups with mixed results. He bumped my fist. “But you? I’m glad we have met. You are a real one.”
Funnily, he was kind of stiff, but I thought he was just socially awkward. I thanked him and said he seemed like a real one, too. He was in marketing and had been lured to town by a large company for diversity, too. He was thriving, but something still felt off, he said. “There is the feeling of not belonging, of being marooned on a distant planet. Sometimes, I just feel like I am waiting for a ship to rescue me.”
I noticed he didn’t use contractions when he spoke. He also had a little bit of an accent but I just thought he was from another country. “Me, too,” I said. “It’s not like it’s bad here. There just aren’t very many other kinds of people.”
We’d both had success with women, white women, but we felt unfulfilled, misunderstood.
“And it is not that they are white. It is that they just do not get me. I have dated women who happened to be white in other places, and they did get me.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s just weird. It’s like it’s this place.” I looked outside at all the passing people, who were all white. I looked back at him, and we just nodded at each other and then started laughing. We both had the same sense of humor. We talked about how, according to statistics, out of every five people living in The Whitest City in America, 4.75 were white.
I said, “But of course that just makes me think about the 0.25 that isn’t, like there’s a really short Black person somewhere walking around the city.”
“Or,” he said, “some non-white leg hopping about town.”
We both laughed again.
I made a joke that it was almost like I was having a conversation with myself in the mirror, and he said, “Word? That is so dope.”
JUDGE’S CITATION
“Chris Stuck’s writing demonstrates the goal of true social satire, which is not to diminish or overstate, but to balance just enough truth in the equation that what is magnified upon feels convincing and real. The frankness of his writing puts pressure on a story to hold up and affirms the level at which a writer works when it does. This to say, Chris Stuck is writing at the highest level.”
– Scott Gloden
