Literary Arts is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2026 Oregon Literary Fellowships.
Literary Arts received 439 applications from writers and 13 applications from publishers for the 2026 fellowships. Out-of-state judges spent several months evaluating these applications, using literary excellence as the primary criterion.
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 2026 Oregon Literary Fellowship recipients will be honored at the 2026 Oregon Book Awards Ceremony on April 20, along with the winners and finalists of the 2026 Oregon Book Awards. The ceremony will be hosted by Kimberly King Parsons.
Oregon Literary Career Fellowships
Diana Oropeza of Portland, Oregon Literary Career Fellowship for Writers of Color
Diana Oropeza is a Portland-based writer working across poetry, nonfiction, and spoken word. Born in Lake Tahoe to Mexican immigrant parents, her work explores migration, translation, and layered narrative voice. She holds an MFA from PNCA at Willamette University, where her debut hybrid collection An Incomplete Catalog of Disappearance (Future Tense Books, 2024) won the Thesis Award, and a BA in Media Studies from UC Berkeley. She co-founded The Social Stomach, a spoken word and drums project that reimagines traditional poetry readings. Her writing appears in Willamette Magazine, River Styx, and Not My Style. She is currently researching lab rats and mazes for a new hybrid collection examining systems of control and observation.
Devon Fredericksen of Milwaukie, Oregon Literary Career Fellowship
Devon Fredericksen is a queer author, essayist, and nature writer. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Guernica, High Country News, Hakai, bioGraphic, Yes!, Switchyard, Indian Country Today, Sonora Review, and other publications. Devon has written How to Camp in the Woods, among other books, and her writing has been supported by the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference and highlighted twice in the Longreads Top 5 list. She is currently working on her book-in-progress, Only the Birds Know: A Love Story Between a People, a Place, and a Remarkable Duck (Pegasus, 2027).
Oregon Literary Fellowships
FICTION
Amy Marcott of Portland, Laurell Swails and Donald Monroe Memorial Fellowship
Amy Marcott has published prose in Salt Hill, DIAGRAM, Necessary Fiction, Southeast Review, Memorious, Juked, The Nassau Review, The Best Travel Writing (Volume 11), and elsewhere. Her work has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won third place in Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Contest. She earned her MFA from Penn State University. She lives in Portland, where she is at work on a novel.
Molly Reid of Portland, Women Writers Fellowship
Molly Reid’s debut collection of stories, The Rapture Index: A Suburban Bestiary, won the seventh annual BOA Short Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the Story Prize and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham for Debut Short Story Collection prize. Individual stories of hers have appeared on NPR and in the journals TriQuarterly, Crazyhorse, Ninth Letter, West Branch, and Witness, among others. She received her PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Cincinnati and currently resides in Portland, Oregon.
Casey Walker of Portland, Laurell Swails and Donald Monroe Memorial Fellowship
Casey Walker is the author of the novel Last Days in Shanghai (Counterpoint Press) and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He holds a PhD in English Literature from Princeton University. His fiction and essays have appeared in The Believer, The Common, Boston Review, The New York Times, and El País, among others. He grew up in a small desert town on the California-Mexico border, which serves as the setting of his novel-in-progress, MEXICALI.
NONFICTION
Jeremy Klemin of Portland, Leslie Bradshaw Fellowship
Jeremy Klemin’s writing and literary translations appear or are forthcoming in The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic, The New Republic, AGNI, The Iowa Review, Literary Hub, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. A former Fulbright Fellow and former editor of Joyland Magazine’s “Consulate” section, he holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from Oregon State University.
Jason Sepac of Portland, Walt Morey Fellowship
Jason Sepac is an essayist and visual artist currently living in Beaverton, OR. His visual essays and nonfiction have appeared in Kenyon Review Online, The Iowa Review, Fourth Genre, The Normal School, The Pinch, and others. Jason is currently developing an essay collection that considers nostalgia and how it intersects with the image-based technology of particular eras (Polaroids, Super 8 Film, VHS, early cinema, etc.). He earned an MFA from Oregon State University, where he currently teaches creative writing.
POETRY
Jae Nichelle of Portland, Writer of Color Fellowship
Jae Nichelle (she/her) is the author of God Themselves (Andrews McMeel, 2023) and the chapbook The Porch (As Sanctuary) (YesYes Books, 2019). She was a finalist for a 2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and won the inaugural John Lewis Writing Award in poetry from the Georgia Writers Association. She believes in all of our collective ability to contribute to radical change.
YOUNG READERS
Pooja Nukala of Portland, Edna L. Homes Fellowship in Young Readers
Pooja Nukala is a children’s author, a member of Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), and a recipient of the SCBWI Work in Progress Award/Anna Cross Giblin Nonfiction Award. Pooja’s works have been published in magazines such as Highlights Hello, High Five, and internationally in The School Magazine of Australia. Most of her literary works capture topics related to STEM, climate change, empowering stories of women of color, and nuggets of awe hidden in everyday life.
DRAMA
Jeffree Morel of Portland, C.H. Hamilton Bailey Fellowship
Jeffree Morel is a creative writer and educator based in Oregon, raised in southern California. He graduated from Chapman University with a BA in screenwriting, and minors in psychology and English. He’s also obtained certifications in permaculture design and yoga teaching and hosts workshops on ethical foraging and forest bathing. His fiction and poetry have been featured in publications such as the South Settle Emerald, Weber: The Contemporary West, and Rabble Review. His blog is Foraging for More on Substack.
PUBLISHERS
Airlie Press of Portland
Airlie Press was founded in 2007 by four poets with a vision to create a collective press that would champion poets and poetry of the Pacific Northwest. Airlie Press is a nonprofit publishing collective dedicated to cultivating and sustaining fine contemporary poetry. We produce beautiful and compelling books by Pacific Northwest poets and offer writers in the region a shared-work publishing alternative. Our mission is to support and amplify the work of emerging and underrepresented poets, particularly those whose voices are rooted in the Pacific Northwest and who experiment with form and identity.
Provecho Magazine of Portland
Provecho Magazine was founded in 2022 by Kyle Yoshioka and Heldáy de la Cruz. Provecho Magazine serves as a point of connection and belonging for those of us who don’t see ourselves or our stories reflected in the food media landscape. Its multilingual publication is created by a team of POC writers, editors, photographers, and designers. Food is used a lens to explore identity, memory, grief, celebration, and family narratives. Writers are encouraged to completely inhabit the space they earn, are under no obligation to cleave to an institutional voice, and are given the support needed to probe vulnerable subject matter. In this way, we share the stories no one else can tell.
Fellowships to writers in the Nonfiction, Fiction, and Poetry categories were judged by a panel consisting of Thomas Dai, author of the memoir-in-essays Take My Name But Say It Slow; Patrycja Humienik, author of the poetry collection We Contain Landscapes; and Raghav Rao, author of the novel Missy.
The judge for the Young Readers category was author Lilliam Rivera. Playwright Ronan Noone judged in the Drama category. The Oregon Literary Fellowships for Publishers were judged by Emily Smith, director of the Publishing Laboratory at UNC Wilmington, and publisher of Lookout Books and Ecotone.
