The Adroit Journal is proud to announce the seventh class of Gregory Djanikian Scholars in Poetry and the second class of Anthony Veasna So Scholars in Fiction—twelve exciting emerging poets and fiction writers we should all be watching. All emerging poets and fiction writers who have not published full-length collections or novels were eligible for submission—regardless of age, geographic location, and educational status.
Selected from a competitive pool of international applicants of more than 1,200 entrants, Djanikian and Veasna So Scholars receive stipends and publication.
The 2024 class of Gregory Djanikian Scholars in Poetry includes: Aliyah Cotton (of Charlottesville, VA), Majda Gama (of Reston, VA), Melissa McKinstry (of San Diego, CA), Quinton Okoro (of Raleigh, NC), Edythe Rodriguez (of Brookhaven, GA), and Syd Westley (of St. Louis, MO).
The 2024 class of Anthony Veasna So Scholars in Fiction includes: C. Adán Cabrera (of Barcelona, Spain), Allison Field Bell (of Salt Lake City, UT), Cristina Fries (of San Francisco, CA), Devon Halliday (of Athens, OH), Lu Han (of New York, NY), and Basmah Sakrani (of Memphis, TN).
More information about each scholar is available below.
We couldn’t be more excited about each unique, vibrant voice we’ve been fortunate enough to acquaint ourselves with this year. Each of these writers brings an undeniable fire to the page, and we can’t wait to see what they’ll write next.
Our 2024 Finalists include: Allison Albino · Rhoni Blankenhorn · Olivia Cheng · Kate DeLay · Ira Goga · Laura Joyce-Hubbard · Alyson Mosquera Dutemple · Gustav Parker Hibbett · Christopher Santantasio · Dilara Sümbül · Christopher Urban · Alanna Weissman.
Our 2024 Semifinalists include: Summer Awad · John Darcy · Ajanaé Dawkins · R.C. Davis · Maz Do · Eliza Gilbert · Maria Gray · Brian Gyamfi · Elizabeth Hickson · Chelsea Christine Hill · Angie Kang · Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey · Matt Kessler · Nolan Lee · Brigitte Leschhorn Arrocha · Emily Lowe · Alexa Luborsky · Meghana Mysore · Troy Osaki · Teresa Pham-Carsillo · Colleen Rothman · Steffi Sin · David Joez Villaverde · Kyla D. Walker · Constant Laval Williams · Eric Yip.
ABOUT THE 2024 DJANIKIAN & VEASNA SO SCHOLARS
C. Adán Cabrera (Fiction) is a Salvadoran-American writer. His writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Rumpus, Barrelhouse, Carve Magazine, Kweli, and elsewhere. The 2nd place winner of the 2020 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, his work has also received support from Tin House, the Lambda Literary Foundation, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, where he received the 2023 Randall Kenan Scholarship in fiction. Originally from Los Angeles, Carlos holds an MFA from the University of San Francisco and a bachelor’s degree in English from UCLA. He is currently based in Barcelona, Spain, where he is editing his debut collection of short stories. Visit him online at www.cadancabrera.net.
Aliyah Cotton (Poetry) is a queer poet of color from Reston, Virginia. She earned her MFA from Boston University, where she was a recipient of the Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Indiana Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Rust & Moth, Southern Humanities Review, and has been nominated for the 2024 Best of the Net Anthology. Aliyah lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she creates music under the moniker October Love.
Allison Field Bell (Fiction) is originally from northern California, but has spent most of her adult life in the desert. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Prose at the University of Utah, and she has an MFA in Fiction from New Mexico State University. Her prose appears in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, New Orleans Review, West Branch, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Pinch, and elsewhere. Her poems appear in or are forthcoming from The Cincinnati Review, Superstition Review, Palette Poetry, RHINO Poetry, The Greensboro Review, Nimrod International Journal, and elsewhere. Find her at allisonfieldbell.com.
Cristina Fries (Fiction) is a Colombian-American fiction writer. Her work has appeared in PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2018, Michigan Quarterly Review, Epoch Literary Magazine, Action, Spectacle, and War, Literature & the Arts. She is the recipient of a PEN/Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Tin House Scholarship. Her operas have been performed nationally, and she lives in San Francisco. More at cristinafries.com.
Majda Gama (Poetry) is the author of The Call of Paradise, selected by Diane Seuss as winner of the 2022 Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize. Her full-length manuscript won the 2023 Wandering Aengus Book Award and will be published in 2025. She is the 2023 Shenandoah Graybeal-Gowen award recipient for Virginia poets. Her poems have recently appeared in Four Way Review; Michigan Quarterly Review; The Offing; and We Call to the Eye & the Night (Persea), an anthology of love poems by Arab Anglophone poets; and are forthcoming from Prairie Schooner and Shenandoah. She loves cardamom in her tea, saffron in her chocolate, and rosewater in everything. For more, visit majdagama.com.
Devon Halliday (Fiction) is a Pushcart Prize–winning writer, with short stories published in Ploughshares, Ninth Letter, Indiana Review, Fence, Idaho Review, and TriQuarterly, among others. She is currently pursuing a Fiction MFA at the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, with support from the Rona Jaffe Foundation. She lives in her hometown of Athens, Ohio, where she and her husband own and operate a local bakery.
Lu Han (Fiction) is a Chinese-American writer based in New York. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and can be found in The Margins, Lost Balloon, HAD, and elsewhere. Lu is a 2023 Tin House Scholar, and has received support from the Lewis Latimer House Museum, the Hudson Valley Writers Center, and Guernica. Her novel-in-progress, The Rusticated, is shortlisted for the 2023 First Pages Prize in Fiction. In her free time, you might find her rock climbing, at a coffeeshop, or walking around the city. She hopes to have a dog one day.
Melissa McKinstry (Poetry) holds an MFA from Pacific University. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize, and appears in journals including Beloit Poetry Journal, Rattle, Alaska Quarterly Review, december, Tahoma Literary Review, and Best New Poets 2023. For more, visit MelissaMcKinstry.com.
Quinton Okoro (Poetry) is a Black, nonbinary poet from North Carolina, with a BA in Creative Writing from UNC-Chapel Hill. They are a 2023 Tin House Summer Scholar, winner of the Academy of American Poets’ 2023 Anne Williams Burrus Prize in Poetry, and semi-finalist for Nimrod International Journal‘s 2023 Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry. Their poetry is featured in or forthcoming from Shō Poetry Journal, Poets.org, Nimrod International Journal, Driftwood Press, and Allium: A Journal of Poetry & Prose, among others. Find them on Twitter @quintonpoet.
Edythe Rodriguez (Poetry) is an Upper Darby poet and copywriter, hardcore Bustelo drinker and non-violent Beyhive member. Her debut chapbook We, the Spirits won Grand Prize in the 2022 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest and releases this July. Edythe has received fellowships from The Hurston/Wright Foundation, The Watering Hole, Brooklyn Poets and elsewhere. Her work is published in Obsidian, The Offing, Torch Literary Arts, and elsewhere. You can follow her work at edytherodriguez.com.
Basmah Sakrani (Fiction) is a Pakistani-Canadian writer whose narratives explore displacement, diaspora and loss. A finalist for the 2023 Kinder/Crump Short Fiction Award and the 2023 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize, her work has also appeared in Best Small Fictions 2022, Baltimore Review, Split Lip Press, Past Ten, and other journals. Basmah is the Fiction Interviewer for The Maine Review and works in advertising in New York City. You can follow her on Substack.
Syd Westley (Poetry) (they/them) is a poet and artist from the Bay Area. An MFA candidate in poetry at Washington University in St. Louis, their work has been supported and/or published by Lambda Literary, Frontier Poetry, Rejected Lit, and others. They also write music reviews at sydboyxxxmusic.blogspot.com.
ABOUT THE ADROIT JOURNAL
At its foundation, The Adroit Journal has its eyes focused ahead, seeking to showcase what its global staff of writers sees as the future of poetry, prose, and art. The journal hosts the annual Adroit Prizes for Poetry and Prose, the Gregory Djanikian Scholars Program, the Anthony Veasna So Scholars Program, and the online Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program.
Featured in Best American Poetry, Pushcart Prizes: Best of the Small Presses, Poetry Daily, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets, and by the New York Times, the Paris Review, Teen Vogue, PBS NewsHour, and NPR, the journal has featured the voices of Terrance Hayes, Arthur Sze, Joanna Klink, D. A. Powell, Edith Pearlman, Diane Seuss, Jericho Brown, Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux, Raymond Antrobus, Victoria Chang, Eve L. Ewing, Lydia Millet, NoViolet Bulawayo, Ocean Vuong, Arthur Sze, Sarah Kay, Ned Vizzini, Fatimah Asghar, Danez Smith, and beyond.
