Introducing The Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil 2024–2025 Emerging Writer Fellows
We are thrilled to introduce The Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil 2024–2025 Emerging Writer Fellows: Amanda Ajamfar, Alex Barnett, Jon Elofson, Sophie Kalkreuth, MJ Kaufman, Karthik Raman, Sheena Daree Romero, Clare Shearer, and Ang Xu. Please join us in congratulating these nine exceptional writers and welcoming them to The Center for Fiction’s community as they begin their Fellowship.
Over the course of one year, our Fellows receive financial support, professional and creative development, personalized mentorship, and community engagement. The Fellowship also marks the beginning of a lifelong relationship with The Center for Fiction. Alumni remain a vital part of our community, launching their debuts on our stage, participating in our programs, and offering support to new Fellows. Our 117 Fellowship alumni have published over 60 books, reflecting The Center’s mission to nurture and champion exciting new voices. Fellows have also gone on to receive prestigious honors and awards including the Pulitzer Prize, the Whiting Award, the NAACP Image Award, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the Gotham Prize, and the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35.
We received more than 1,000 applications for this year’s Fellowship; the final selection was made through a blind judging process by authors Gina Chung, Sidik Fofana, Chantal Johnson, and Manuel Martinez, all alumni of the Fellowship.
We invite you to celebrate the Fellows with us at The Center for Fiction on October 17th. The new cohort will appear alongside the 2023–2024 Fellows as they conclude their Fellowship year with a final reading from their works in progress. RSVP at this link and get to know our new Fellows below.
Meet the 2024-2025 Fellows
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Amanda Ajamfar
Amanda Ajamfar
Amanda is a writer living in Brooklyn. Her short stories have appeared in the Colorado Review, the Georgia Review, the Southern Review, and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. She is currently working on her first novel.
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Alex Barnett
Alex Barnett
Alex is a Brooklyn-based writer, researcher, and filmmaker. He is originally from Philadelphia. He holds a BA in film production and creative writing from Northwestern University and an MA in intermediality from University of Edinburgh.
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Jon Elofson
Jon Elofson
Jon holds a BS from Brown University and an MFA in fiction from University of North Carolina Wilmington. His work has appeared in Electric Literature, Hayden’s Ferry Review, the Southeast Review, and Pleiades. In 2021, he won an AWP Intro Journals Award. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his hound dog, Goose.
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Sophie Kalkreuth
Sophie Kalkreuth
Sophie is a Brooklyn-based writer and journalist, and former Editor-in-Chief of LP magazine in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Her fiction and criticism have been featured in the Shanghai Literary Review and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is currently at work on her first novel.
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MJ Kaufman
MJ Kaufman
MJ is a playwright who started writing fiction during the pandemic. Their plays have been produced around the country as well as in Russia and Australia. Their fiction has been published in Catapult and they were a 2023 Tin House Fiction Scholar.
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Karthik Raman
Karthik Raman
Karthik grew up in Mansfield, Ohio and now lives in Brooklyn with an Empress Tree. Currently at work on his first novel, he writes fiction about the slippery nature of homelands and dreamscapes and their chaotic, intertwined forces through speculative fiction and family narrative.
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Sheena Daree Romero
Sheena Daree Romero
Sheena is a humorist and doodler. Her words have been published in Taco Bell Quarterly and granted the Miriam Chaikin Prose Award. She’s working on an unhinged campus novel about competition, sabotage, justice, and a queer black lady who moves to the wrong place—Vermont.
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Clare Shearer
Clare Shearer
Clare Shearer is a writer living in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books and been supported by the Anderson Center. She has an MFA from the University of Idaho and works in publishing.
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Ang Xu
Ang Xu
Ang is a writer from Beijing. She has received an MFA from Columbia University, where she was the Editor-in-Chief of Columbia Journal. Her work is published or forthcoming in the Chicago Review and Action, Spectacle.
Support Emerging Writers
The Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowship is supported in part by the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Stuart S. Applebaum Giving Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Amazon Literary Partnership, Hawthornden Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, Penguin Random House, Macmillan, the Karpfinger Agency, and contributors to The Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil Award for Emerging Writers.
If you would like to lend your support to our work for emerging writers, please consider donating to The Center for Fiction today.