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.
Iván Cantú-Villarreal (he/him) is a 2025 Oregon Literary Fellowship Recipient in Drama and the winner of the Walt Morey Fellowship. Iván 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.
Q & A WITH LITERARY ARTS
What excites you the most about receiving an Oregon Literary Fellowship?
They say writing is a lonely pursuit, but I reckon screenwriting is even more so. Even playwrights have the good fortune to sometimes have their work be read in literary classes and circles. Typically, the only people that get to “read” my work are actors and department heads in a film crew. It’s so rare that you get a chance as a screenwriter for your work to be read and recognized so it was incredibly exciting and validating when I got the news that I was a Fellowship recipient.
How would you describe your writing process or creative practice?
The most important part of my process after an idea comes to me is what I would call “laying the bedrock” before writing it out. This entails reading three to four nonfiction books either directly or tangentially related to whatever story I’m writing and creating a database of notes based on that. It’s not so much research as it is having that foundational reading to rely on to propel my fiction and help it always ring true. And it abates writer’s block completely.
Primogenito in particular was greatly informed by the work of Turkish Cypriot-born American psychiatrist, Vamik D. Volkan, and what he calls the perennial mourning of immigrants.
What authors or books have shaped you the most as a writer?
When my family and I immigrated to the US back in 2001, my mom insisted that we should speak English at home to facilitate assimilation, something I vehemently resisted as I felt that I was sacrificing something I wasn’t ready to let go in not speaking my native language daily. Soon after, around 2002 when I was twelve years old, I snuck Interview with The Vampire off my brother’s bookshelf enticed by all its title’s promise of sensuality and violence. That became the moment I saw the value in really learning the language to seek out these worlds I would have deprived myself of otherwise. And not that I intellectualized it then, but in retrospect, the character of Louis as a creature of perpetual longing was a priceless refuge to me as a new immigrant to this country.
Most recently, the work of Melissa Febos has absolutely transformed me. In particular, her book Girlhood. I honestly don’t quite recall how it is that I even encountered her work but I discovered it back in 2020 right after moving to Oregon. Her ability to unravel you through the vulnerability and exactitude of her writing is uncanny and inspiring. I’m 100% a better writer and human being after having discovered her.
Are there any Oregonian writers you look to for motivation or inspiration?
Chuck Palahniuk was another author I snuck off my brother’s bookshelf around the same time I started reading Anne Rice at way too young of an age, Fight Club being the book of his that I read first. I feel like the way he can navigate an audience down to the darkest depths to then transcend to the other side to find the raw humanity inherent in us all is something that has always stuck with me and has served as a North Star in my own writing. I feel like he also imparted a lot of similar lessons through his stories that Anne Rice did but with inverted methods.
What projects are you working on right now?
Aside from continuing to seek out funding sources to produce and film Primogenito, I’m currently in the last stages of preproduction and nearing the conclusion of the crowdfunding campaign for a semi-autobiographical short film called Machaca about a Mexican immigrant boy struggling to balance his cultural identity through the pressures of middle school, as experienced through food.
I’m also deep into writing what I hope is my debut novel, Mil, about an amateur stand-up comedian that dies unexpectedly and finds himself in purgatory with a job as a co-pilot of sorts to demonic possessions that must find a way to resolve unfinished business with his mother, who is still amongst the living.
Do you have any advice for future applicants?
Literary Arts is undoubtedly the greatest resource for writers here in Oregon. Whether you’re applying for a fellowship or not, there are so many offerings from Literary Arts to tap into to find a supportive and enthusiastic community that not only will accept you with open arms but also wants you to succeed.
So my advice would be for all of you to find us there, we can’t wait to meet you!
WRITING SAMPLE EXCERPT: PRIMOGENITO
JUDGE’S CITATION
“I was immediately drawn into the world of Iván’s screenplay Primogenito, which is filled with myth, celestial wonder and rich characters striving to decode difficult truths about life on planet earth. The story centers a strong, intelligent Latina woman, Elara, a blind astronomer driven to understand the mysteries of the cosmos and what happened to her father years before. I was drawn into Elara’s epic quest, and the friends and colleagues who support her—even when her intensity threatens to drive them away. Iván’s writing is simultaneously expansive and precise, magically real and incredibly grounded. I’m so glad he will receive this Fellowship, and hope many more people can experience his work.”
– Lisa D’Amour
