MARCH 2019 RECIPIENTS

Fiona Taylor and Carrie Wittmer - New Erotica for Feminists - “Both light-hearted and empowering, New Erotica for Feminists—based off of the viral McSweeney’s piece of the same name—is a sly, satirical take on all the things that turn feminists on.”

Taylor and Wittmer, along with their two co-authors started their own indie-comedy site, The Belladonna. The original article that inspired this book was written to create some hype around the one year anniversary of the site.

APRIL 2019 RECIPIENT

Lincoln Michel - Upright Beasts - Twenty-one genre-bending stories of bestial transformation, accidental murder, erotically-challenged dictatorship, and other tales of darkness, absurdity, and confusion.

Michel‘s fiction has appeared in Granta, Oxford American, Tin House, NOON, Pushcart Prize anthology, and elsewhere. His essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The Believer, Bookforum, Buzzfeed, Vice, The Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere.

MAY 2019 RECIPIENT

Ian Frisch - Magic is Dead - In the vein of Neil Strauss’ The Game and Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein comes the fascinating story of one man’s colorful, mysterious, and personal journey into the world of magic, and his unlikely invitation into an underground secret society of revolutionary magicians from around the world.

Ian is a journalist, author, and documentary producer/consultant currently living in Brooklyn. He normally writes longform narrative and investigative features.

JUNE 2019 RECIPIENT

Michelle Fiordaliso - Everything You Needed to Know About Ex - In 1969, David Reuben, MD, published his groundbreaking book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex*. Forty years later, we know plenty about sex. The thing we're so confused about, however, is what to do when the sex is over, and you're left with an Ex.

Michelle’s writing and films have won numerous awards including a PEN Center USA award for literary fiction and a gold plaque for best documentary short from The Chicago International Film Festival. Michelle has been published in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Self, The Huffington Post and more.

JULY 2019 RECIPIENT

Robin Beth Schaer - Shipbreaking - Robin Beth Schaer’s debut book of poetry, Shipbreaking, charts a beautiful and dangerous journey. It is an intimate and interstellar odyssey where seas rise, mastodons roam, aeronauts float overhead, bodies electrify, and a child is born as a ship wrecks in a hurricane.

Robin Beth Schaer was born and raised in New York. She received a B.A. in Religion from Colgate University and an M.F.A. in Writing from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Bomb Magazine, Paris Review, Denver Quarterly, Washington Square, and Guernica, among others.

AUGUST 2019 RECIPIENT

Stephanie Schroeder - Headcase: LGBTQ Writers & Artists on Mental Health and Wellness - Headcase is a groundbreaking collection of personal reflections and artistic representations illustrating the intersection of mental wellness, mental illness, and LGBTQ identity, as well as the lasting impact of historical views equating queer and trans identity with mental illness.

Stephanie is a NYC-based writer and LGBTQ, arts, and mental health activist. Her work has been anthologized in the classic queer anthology "That's Revolting: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation,” along with many other anthologies. Her journalism has been featured in The Guardian, Brooklyn Magazine, Lambda Literary Review, Curve Magazine, Healthline, The Brooklyn Paper, and various other outlets.

SEPTEMBER 2019 RECIPIENT

Helon Habila - Travelers - A Nigerian graduate student who has made his home in America knows what it means to strike out for new shores. When his wife proposes that he accompany her to Berlin, where she has been awarded a prestigious arts fellowship, he has his reservations: "I knew every departure is a death, every return a rebirth. Most changes happen unplanned, and they always leave a scar."

Helon Habila was born in Nigeria. He has lived in Lagos, Norwich, New York, Washington DC, Berlin, and currently teaches creative writing at George Mason University in Virginia, USA. His writing has won the Caine Prize, the Commonwealth Prize (Waiting for an Angel), the Emily Balch Prize, the Virginia Library Foundation Fiction Prize (Measuring Time), and shortlisted for many others. In 2013 he edited the Granta Book of African Short Story. He is currently working on his fourth novel.

OCTOBER 2019 RECIPIENT

Stephanie Jimenez - They Could Have Named Her Anything - Every morning, seventeen-year-old Maria Anís Rosario takes the subway an hour from her boisterous and close-knit family in Queens to her private high school on the Upper East Side, where she struggles to fit in as one of the only Latina students--until Rocky welcomes her into this new life. White, rebellious, and ignored by her wealthy parents, Rocky uses her money toward one goal: to get away with anything. To Maria, it's a dazzling privilege.

Stephanie Jimenez is based in Queens, New York. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in the Guardian, O! the Oprah Magazine, Joyland Magazine, The New York Times, and more. She is a former Fulbright recipient and a graduate of Scripps College in Claremont, California.

NOVEMBER 2019 RECIPIENT

Manuel Gonzalez - The Regional Office is Under Attack! - Recruited by a defector from within, Rose is a young assassin leading the attack on the Regional Office, eager to stretch into her powers and prove herself on her first mission. Defending the Regional Office is Sarah—who may or may not have a mechanical arm—fiercely devoted to the organization that took her in as a young woman in the wake of her mother’s sudden disappearance.

Manuel Gonzales is the author of the acclaimed story collection The Miniature Wife, winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. A graduate of the Columbia University Creative Writing Program, he teaches writing at the University of Kentucky and the Institute of American Indian Arts. He has published fiction and nonfiction in Open City, Fence, One Story, Esquire, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and The Believer.

DECEMBER 2019 RECIPIENT

Rachel Lyon - Self-Portrait With Boy - Lu Rile is a relentlessly focused young photographer struggling to make ends meet. Working three jobs, responsible for her aging father, and worrying that her crumbling loft apartment is being sold to developers, she is at a point of desperation. One day, in the background of a self-portrait, Lu accidentally captures an image of a boy falling to his death. The photograph turns out to be startlingly gorgeous, the best work of art she's ever made. It's an image that could change her life...if she lets it.

Rachel’s short work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including One Story, Longreads, Joyland, and Electric Literature. Editor-in-Chief of Epiphany magazine and cofounder of the reading series Ditmas Lit, Rachel has taught at Catapult, the Sackett Street Writers Workshop, Slice Literary, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn, her hometown.

JANUARY 2020 RECIPIENT

Maria Alejandra Barrios - A Body In Between Spells - These are stories about immigration, magic, and love told in the first and second person by women characters.

Maria Alejandra Barrios Vélez is a writer born in Barranquilla, Colombia. She has lived in Bogotá and Manchester where in 2016 she completed a Masters degree in Creative Writing from The University of Manchester. She was selected for the Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program: Performing & Literary Arts for the city of New York in 2018. Her stories have been published in Hobart Pulp, Reservoir Journal, Bandit Fiction, Cosmonauts Avenue, Jellyfish Review and Lost Balloon. Her work has been supported by organizations like Vermont Studio Center and Caldera Arts Center.