Get the Word Out 2025 fiction fellows, pictured, from top left:
Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, Roohi Choudhry, Kerry Donoghue, Lacey N. Dunham, Shasta Grant,
Laura Venita Green, Benedict Nguyễn, Miranda Schmidt, and Daniel Tam-Claiborne.
New York, NY—December 18, 2024—Poets & Writers today announced the nine writers selected for the 2025 fiction cohort of Get the Word Out, a publicity incubator designed to help early career authors maximize the exposure of their forthcoming books.
Selected writers—each of whom has a first or second book slated for publication in the coming year—will receive expert guidance and peer support to harness the opportunities presented by the publication of their books. Through a series of workshops led by Jennifer Huang, a seasoned publicist who has worked with acclaimed authors like R. O. Kwon, Samanta Schweblin, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Maya C. Popa, participants will develop personalized strategies to optimize their book launches—at no cost to the authors or their publishers. Additional seminars with leading industry professionals will further equip participants with practical tools and professional connections.
“Get the Word Out aims to provide writers with the skills and networks they need to reach readers,” said Jared Jackson, Poets & Writers’ director of programs and partnerships. “This year’s cohort is extraordinarily talented, and I look forward to supporting their careers.”
Launched in 2022, Get the Word Out builds on Poets & Writers’ decades-long history of providing practical guidance about the business of writing. The program aims to reduce barriers to success for writers from historically underrepresented communities—including those who identify as Black, Indigenous, or persons of color; writers with disabilities; and LGBTQ+ writers—as well as writers from outside of New York City, those who do not have an MFA or equivalent degree, and those whose books are published by independent presses. Poets & Writers is currently accepting applications for the next cycle of early career poets through December 31. The next cycle for early career fiction writers opens in May 2025. For more information, visit at.pw.org/GTWO.
2025 FICTION FELLOWS
Yu-Mei Balasingamchow is the author of Names Have Been Changed, forthcoming from Tiny Reparations Books in 2026. Her short fiction has received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, won the Mississippi Review Fiction Prize, and been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Sewanee Review Fiction Contest. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University and has received grants and fellowships from the Elizabeth George Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the National Arts Council and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and elsewhere.
Roohi Choudhry was born in Pakistan and grew up in southern Africa. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship and residencies at Hedgebrook and Djerassi. Her stories and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Callaloo, Longreads, and Kenyon Review. Her debut novel, Outside Women, is forthcoming in 2025 from the University of Kentucky Press.
Kerry Donoghue’s poetry and stories have appeared in Ninth Letter, Painted Bride Quarterly, Permafrost, the Louisville Review, and the South Carolina Review, among other journals. She is also the author of the Loudest Voice of All, a children’s book she wrote to fundraise for an organization that educates girls about the power of voting. She earned an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. Her debut story collection, Mouth, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press.
Lacey N. Dunham’s novel The Belles is forthcoming in fall 2025 from Atria. A queer working-class writer and first-generation college graduate, she has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Sewanee Writers Conference as a Tennessee Williams scholar, and Catapult as a merit scholar. Her writing appears in Ploughshares, Witness, Kenyon Review, the Normal School, Southwest Review, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere.
Shasta Grant, an Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow, Kenyon Review prize winner, and recipient of writing residencies from Hedgebrook and the Kerouac Project, holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the author of the chapbook Gather Us Up and Bring Us Home (Split Lip, 2017), a senior editor at SmokeLong Quarterly, and cofounder of Brown Bag Lit. Her debut novel, When We Were Feral, is forthcoming in 2026 from Regal House.
Laura Venita Green’s debut novel, Strays, is forthcoming in fall 2025 from Unnamed Press. Her fiction won the Story Foundation Prize and has appeared in Story, the Missouri Review, Joyland, and Fatal Flaw. She grew up in rural Louisiana and holds an MFA in fiction and translation from Columbia University.
Benedict Nguyễn is a dancer and gym buff. Between pistol squats and muscle-ups, she works as a creative producer in live performance. She’s written for the Baffler, BOMB, Los Angeles Review of Books, Vanity Fair, the Brooklyn Rail, the Margins, and other publications. In 2022, she published nasty notes, the redacted-email zine on freelance labor. Her debut novel, Hot Girls with Balls, is forthcoming in July 2025 from Catapult Books.
Miranda Schmidt’s work circles the folkloric, the familial, queer magic, and the more-than-human world. Their writing has appeared in TriQuarterly, Orion, Electric Literature, Catapult, Phoebe, and more. Originally from the Midwest, Miranda now lives in Portland, Oregon. Miranda’s debut novel, Leafskin, is forthcoming from Stillhouse Press.
Daniel Tam-Claiborne’s debut novel, Transplants, a finalist for the 2023 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, is forthcoming in 2025 from Regalo Press. He is the author of the short story collection What Never Leaves (Wilder Voice Books, 2012), and his writing has appeared in Catapult, Literary Hub, Off Assignment, the Rumpus, HuffPost, and elsewhere. A 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, he has also received support from the U.S. Fulbright Program, Kundiman, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and others. Daniel holds degrees from Oberlin College, Yale University, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
ABOUT POETS & WRITERS
Poets & Writers is the primary source of information, support, and guidance for poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers in the United States. Our mission is to foster the professional development of poets and writers, to promote communication throughout the literary community, and to help create an environment in which literature can be appreciated by the widest possible public.
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