2022 CantoMundo Fellow
Cristina Correa is the Kenyon Review Fellow in Poetry. She is the recipient of awards from CantoMundo, Hedgebrook Foundation, Mae Fellowship, Hawthornden Literary Retreat, and Cornell University, among others. Her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, Best New Poets series, Missouri Review, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, and elsewhere.
2022 Langston Hughes Fellows
Marlanda Dekine’s forthcoming poetry collection, Thresh & Hold (Hub City Press, 2022), won the 2021 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize. They are the creator of the spoken word project, i am from a punch & a kiss (2017). Currently, Dekine serves as Healing Justice Fellow with Gender Benders and is the 2021-2022 Shirley Graham Du Bois Creative-In-Residence with Castle of Our Skins. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in Oxford American, POETRY Magazine, Emergence Magazine, beestung, Annulet, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. Dekine is a Tin House Scholar and a Fellow at The Watering Hole. They are a graduate of Furman University (B.A. in Psychology) and the University of South Carolina (Master of Social Work). Dekine is a third-year MFA Candidate at Converse University. They live in South Carolina with their wise dog, Malachi.
Blood Vinyls (Anhinga Press) is Yolanda J. Franklin‘s debut poetry collection that Roxane Gay insists is a “must-must-must read.” A five-time Fulbright Scholar Award Finalist (’20, ’19, ‘18 & ‘17), Franklin is also a Cave Canem, Callaloo and VONA Fellow. Her poems appear or are set to appear in Frontier Magazine, Sugar House Review, Southern Humanities Review, and The Langston Hughes Review. Franklin’s poetry also appears in the recent anthology It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip Hop. Also, she is a two-time recipient of the J.M. Shaw Academy of American Poets Award. Franklin is the Provost’s Postdoctoral Poetry Fellow at Emory University, where she holds a triple appointment in Creative Writing, English, and the African American Studies departments. She’s a proud third generation Floridian, born in the state’s capital—Tallahassee, collects original press vinyl, and can be sighted at her favorite coffee shop, Square Mug Café in Railroad Square enjoying a drink the baristas named after her whenever she visits home.
Oak Morse lives in Houston, Texas, where he teaches creative writing and theatre and leads a youth poetry troop, the Phoenix Fire-Spitters. He was the winner of the 2017 Magpie Award for Poetry in Pulp Literature, a Finalist for the 2020 Witness Literary Award and a Semi-Finalist for the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Currently a Warren Wilson MFA candidate, Oak has received Pushcart Prize nominations, fellowships from Brooklyn Poets, Twelve Literary Arts, Cave Canem’s Starshine and Clay as well as a Stars in the Classroom honor from the Houston Texans. His work appears in Black Warrior Review, Tupelo, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Nimrod, Cosmonaut Avenue, Solstice, among others.
Tila Neguse is a skilled community building strategist, policy analyst, activist and poet. Tila holds a B.A. from Kenyon College in English/Creative Writing and African Diaspora Studies. She currently lives in St. Louis, MO and works as the Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity (CRE2) at Washington University in St. Louis.
Edythe Rodriguez is a Philly-based poet who studied Africology and creative writing at Temple University. She loves neo-soul, battle rap, and long walks through old poetry journals. She has received fellowships from The Watering Hole and Brooklyn Poets, and her work is published or forthcoming in Obsidian, Cream City Review, Call and Response Journal, and Bayou Magazine.
2022 Kundiman Fellows
Ryan Artes is a poet, visual artist, and lightworker. He started a publishing company as a landing place for his creative projects, including his first poetry chapbook, After Midnight. Ryan seeks an expansive community of queer, brown, adoptee writers. IG: @ryanartespoet @jafarmageddon
Nicole W. Lee is a poet of Chinese Malaysian Australian background. Her poetry has been published in Meanjin and received scholarships and fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Tin House Summer and Winter Workshops, AWP, and Miami Book Fair. She is currently based in Sydney, Australia.
April Lim is a Chinese Cambodian American writer from Houston, TX. She has received fellowships and support from Tin House, The Watering Hole, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and elsewhere. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Palette Poetry, Luna Luna Magazine, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and elsewhere. She is currently an MFA candidate at Oklahoma State University. Find her at aprillim.com
Michelle Peñaloza is the author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize (Inlandia Books, 2019). She is also the author of two chapbooks, landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015), and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes (Organic Weapon Arts, 2015). The recipient of fellowships and awards from the University of Oregon and Kundiman, Michelle has also received support from Lemon Tree House, Caldera, 4Culture, Literary Arts, VONA/Voices, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, among others. The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit, MI and raised in Nashville, TN. She now lives in rural Northern California on the land of Round Valley Indian Tribes.
Maria S. Picone/수영 is a Korean American adoptee who won Cream City Review’s 2020 Summer Poetry Prize. She has been published in Tahoma Literary Review, The Seventh Wave, Fractured Lit, and more, including Best Small Fictions 2021. Her work has been supported by Lighthouse Writers Workshop, GrubStreet, Kenyon Review, and Tin House. She is Chestnut Review’s managing editor, the poetry editor at Hanok Review, and associate editor at Uncharted Mag. Her work explores hybridity, identity, languages, and pop culture. Her website is mariaspicone.com, Twitter @mspicone.
Hua Xi is a writer and artist. Their works have appeared in The Nation, Boston Review, and American Poetry Review. They love the sky.
Thomas Lux Scholars
Alecia Beymer is a poet and doctoral candidate in English Education at Michigan State University where her research focuses on literacies formed by space and place, considerations of the interconnected resonances of teachers and students, and the poetics of teaching. She graduated with her MFA from Chatham University and taught creative writing in the Words Without Walls program, a community partnership between Chatham University and the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, PA. She has also taught Secondary English and Creative Writing in North Carolina and Michigan. Her work has been published in English in Education, Research in the Teaching of English, and the Journal of Language and Literacy Education. Her poems have been published in Bellevue Literary Review, The Inflectionist Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, English Journal, and Sugar House Review. As a poet-teacher, she believes that poetry is a form which depends on its capacity to engage reader and writer in a relationship — one of wonder and resonance, in which poetic forms promise profound if ineffable connections across persons.
Julie Daniels trained for the professional theatre as an actress at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. She has worked on the stage, in television, and voiceover. Julie’s passion for history and social justice led her to her to pursue the disciplines of Poetry, playwriting and screenwriting. With a particular emphasis on true life stories, Julie took her drive and passionate expression to focus on the voices of women from history. She then went on to earn an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She is the winner of The Women of Resilience Writing Award, for her essay Rising to Resilience at the Women of Resilience Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her personal essays and memoir have been published by Psychological Perspectives, Thefix.com and The Pitkin Review. In March of 2021, PIF Magazine published Julie’s poem “Wonder.” Julie’s latest screenplay, “Walkin’ on to Freedom’s Land,” is currently designated as an official selection by The Beverly Hills Film Festival. The script placed in the top 10% in the Nicholl Competition at the Motion Picture Academy, was a Second Rounder in The Austin Screenwriting Contest, and received Honorable Mention by the Writer’s Digest Competition.
Remi Recchia is a poet and essayist from Kalamazoo, Michigan. Remi is the author of Quicksand/Stargazing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2021). He is a Ph.D. candidate in English-Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. He currently serves as an associate editor for the Cimarron Review and Reviews Editor for GASHER. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared or will soon appear in Best New Poets 2021, Columbia Online Journal, Harpur Palate, and Juked, among others. Two of his poems have been published on Poets.org as winning pieces for a University & College Academy of American Poets Prize. He holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University. Remi’s chapbook, Sober, is forthcoming with Red Bird Chapbooks in 2022.
Bradley Samore is from Wellington, Florida. He has taught English language arts in the U.S. and Spain. His poetry was shortlisted for Aesthetica Magazine’s Creative Writing Award and River Heron Review’s Poetry Prize.
Felicity Sheehy‘s chapbook Losing the Farm (2021) received the Munster Literature Centre’s international chapbook prize. Her poetry has appeared in The New Republic, The Yale Review, Poetry Daily, Poetry Ireland Review, and elsewhere. She has received awards and scholarships from Bread Loaf, Sewanee, Community of Writers, Narrative Magazine, and the Academy of American Poets.
L.J. Sysko’s work has appeared/is forthcoming in Ploughshares, BEST NEW POETS, Radar, Limp Wrist, SWWIM Every Day, Moist, Stirring, and Painted Bride Quarterly, among others. BATTLEDORE, a chapbook of poems about early motherhood, was published in 2017 (Finishing Line Press). Sysko has been honored with both Virginia Center for Creative Arts and Delaware Division of the Arts Fellowships; her poetry has twice been shortlisted for the Fish Publishing Prize, judged by Billy Collins, and has earned finalist recognition from Marsh Hawk Press, The Pinch, and the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award, among others. She is a reader for The Common and a Delaware State Arts Council board member; she can be found online at ljsysko.com.
