The Adroit Journal is proud to announce the ninth class of Gregory Djanikian Scholars in Poetry and the fourth 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 over 1,400 international applicants, Djanikian and Veansa So Scholars receive stipends and publication.
The 2026 class of Gregory Djanikian Scholars in Poetry includes: Nico Amador (of Bristol, Vermont), Ellie Black (of Little Rock, Arkansas), Nina C. Peláez (of Maui, Hawaii), Talan Tee (of Taipei, Taiwan), Priscilla Wathington (of Daly City, California), and Ziyi Yan (of Riverside, Connecticut).
The 2026 class of Anthony Veasna So Scholars in Fiction includes: Adesuwa Agbonile (of Brooklyn, New York), Courtney Bill (of British Columbia, Canada), J. Marcelo Borromeo (of Cebu, Philippines), Stanley Delgado (of Downey, California), Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey (of Petaluma, California), and Persimmon Tobing (of San Francisco, California).
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 2026 Finalists include: Sam Bailey · Bethany Bruno · Anastasia K. Gates · Chelsea Yuchen Guo · Claire Guo · KT Herr · Pauline Holdsworth · Iris Lee · Nicole W. Lee · Chiwenite Onyekwelu · Lillian Emerick Valentine · Emma Kexin Wang.
Our 2026 Semifinalists include: daniel barrios · Jo Bear · Nathan Blansett · Eliza Browning · Ana Carbonell · Teddy Carolan · Derek Chan · Sarah Chin · T. De Los Reyes · Chey Dugan · Margaret Dunn · Katey Funderburgh · Harrison Hamm · Kaley Hutter · Collin Kim · Meg Kim · Helen Han Wei Luo · Jose Enrique Medina · Rachana Pathak · Sam Schieren · Max Steiner · Edvin Subasic · Tariq Thompson · Evan Wang.
ABOUT THE 2026 DJANIKIAN & VEASNA SO SCHOLARS
Adesuwa Agbonile (Fiction) is a Nigerian-American writer and the host of the Audible podcast Backlash: The Myth of Political Progress. She’s a second-year MFA student at New York University, supported by the Goldwater Fellowship. She’s the winner of the 2025 Brigitte Poirson Literature Prize, and her fiction has appeared in Pleiades, The Loveliest Review, and Hobart Online. In all her work, she aims to twist common conceptions of reality and conjure new ways of thinking and being.
Nico Amador (Poetry) is a writer, educator, and community organizer from San Diego, currently based in rural Vermont. Amador’s writing has recently appeared in the LA Review of Books, American Poetry Journal, West Branch, Pleiades, and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other: A Poetry Unbound Anthology. His chapbook, Flower Wars, was selected as the winner of the Anzaldúa Poetry Prize and was published by Newfound Press. He holds an MFA from Bennington College and is a 2025-26 Emerging Artist Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
Courtney Bill (Fiction) holds a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria. Her work has appeared in PRISM International, New Delta Review, The New Quarterly, Plenitudes, The Malahat Review, CV2, Canthius, Grain, The /tƐmz/ Review, Eavesdrop Magazine, and elsewhere. Her fiction was a finalist for the 2024 Adroit Prize for Prose, judged by Ocean Vuong and Kaveh Akbar. Most recently, she was a finalist for the 2025 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers.
Ellie Black (Poetry) is a Visiting Assistant Professor in English–Creative Writing at Hendrix College. She received both a PhD in Creative Writing (emphasis in memoir/autotheory) and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Mississippi. A finalist for the 2025 Disquiet Prize in Poetry, her work has been published in or is forthcoming from Bennington Review, Sixth Finch, The Common, Washington Square Review, The Drift, and elsewhere. Her debut collection, REVELATOR, received the 2026 APR/Honickman First Book Prize.
J. Marcelo Borromeo (Fiction) is a Filipino writer with an MA in Creative Writing (Prose – Fiction) from the University of East Anglia. His work has appeared in Joyland Magazine, Split Lip Magazine, and Catapult, and was longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions of 2023. He is an alumnus of the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Granta Writers’ Workshop. He currently lives in his hometown of Cebu, Philippines, where he is working on a novel-in-stories.
Stanley Delgado (Fiction) is a graduate of New York University’s MFA program, and he is currently a Literary Arts Fellow at Montalvo’s Sally and Don Lucas Artists Program. His work has appeared in One Story, Glimmer Train, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey (Fiction) is a California transplant living in Munich, Germany, where they are a Visiting Scholar at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. In their writing, they explore human-nature relation and deconstruct binaries that cast humankind in opposition to the natural world. Their work appears in publications such as Split Lip Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, and the Cincinnati Review.
Nina C. Peláez (Poetry) is a writer based in Maui, HI, where she is Associate Director for The Merwin Conservancy, the former home and 18-acre palm forest of poet W.S. Merwin. A Best New Poets and Best of the Net nominee, her work appears or is forthcoming in The Atlantic, Poetry, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Narrative, Poetry Northwest, The Offing, Rattle, Pleiades, and Electric Literature, among others. She has received Prairie Schooner‘s Glenna Luschei Award, Radar’s Coniston Prize, a Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Grant, and the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association/Gwenn A. Nusbaum Scholarship, with residencies, scholarships, and fellowships at Yaddo, Tin House, Tupelo Press, and Key West Literary Seminars, among others. She holds an MFA from Bennington College, mentors for The Adroit Journal, and is at work on her first book.
Talan Tee (Poetry) is a Taipei-based poet born in Phoenix, Arizona. His work appears or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, The Chestnut Review, Santa Clara Review, among others, and has been nationally recognized by the National YoungArts Foundation and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. When not writing or conspiring, you can find him pursuing excellent matcha or daydreaming about space. Talan is a high school sophomore at Taipei American School.
Persimmon Tobing (Fiction) is an Indonesian-American trans woman—raised in New Jersey, but a California girl. She is a Kundiman fellow, an Adroit Journal Anthony So Scholarship recipient, an Associate Editor at the Northwest Review, and a scholar to the Tin House Summer Workshop. Currently, she is at work on a manuscript called What Makes Us Girls, a novel-in-progress centering a trans woman’s misbehavior. If you’d like to keep up with her (at times professional) life updates, you can find her on Instagram at @daik0ndyke.
Priscilla Wathington (Poetry) is a Palestinian American poet/editor and the author of the chapbook, Paper and Stick. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Adi Magazine, Gulf Coast, Michigan Quarterly Review, Salamander, and elsewhere. She was a Sam Mazza Writer-in-Residence at San Francisco State University’s Poetry Center in 2024 and a Tin House Scholar in 2025. Alongside Zeina Hashem Beck and Arwa Alsamarae, Wathington is co-founder of the Bay Area SWANA-&-Friends reading series, Samar. Wathington holds an M.A. from Georgetown University and an MFA from Warren Wilson College.
Ziyi Yan (闫梓祎) (Poetry) is a student at Princeton University. Her work is published in American Poetry Review, The Adroit Journal, Quarterly West, The Harvard Advocate, Poetry Northwest, Rust & Moth, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among others. The founder of The Dawn Review, Ziyi was the 2024-2025 Youth Poet Laureate of Connecticut. Website: https://ziyiyan.carrd.co/
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, the Adroit Editor’s Prizes for Poetry and Fiction, 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, Jericho Brown, Kim Addonizio, 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.
