Derrick Austin, Jamel Brinkley, Natalie Eilbert, Sarah Fuchs, Marcela Fuentes, Barrett Swanson

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WHAT TO DO: What are words worth?

You might not have heard of the 2016-17 Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellows in Fiction and Poetry — yet. But someday these names will be as familiar to readers as Emma Straub, Anthony Doerr and Charles D’Ambrosio, prior graduates of the program. Derrick Austin, Jamel Brinkley, Natalie Eilbert, Sarah Fuchs, Marcela Fuentes and Barrett Swanson will read from their work.

press release: Derrick Austin (MFA: U. of Michigan) is the 2016–2017 Ron Wallace Poetry Fellow. A Cave Canem fellow, he is the author of Trouble the Water (BOA Editions), selected by Mary Szybist for the 2015 A Poulin Jr Prize. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2015, Image: A Journal of Arts and Religion, and New England Review. He was a finalist for the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and he is currently a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.

Jamel Brinkley is the 2016–17 Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellow. He is a Kimbilio Fellow and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has received scholarships from the Napa Valley Writers&rsauo; Conference, the Tin House Writers’ Workshop, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in A Public Space and Gulf Coast. His debut short story collection, A Lucky Man, is forthcoming in 2018 from Graywolf Press.

Natalie Eilbert (MFA: Columbia U.) is the 2016–17 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow. She is the author of Indictus, winner of Noemi Press’s 2016 Poetry Contest, slated for publication in late 2017, as well as the debut poetry collection, Swan Feast (Bloof Books, 2015). Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The New Yorker, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, jubilat, and elsewhere. She is the founding editor of The Atlas Review.

Sarah Fuchs (MFA: NYU Low Residency in Paris) is the 2016–2017 Carl Djerassi Fiction Fellow. She began her teaching career at Castlemont High School in Oakland, California before co-founding the School of Social Justice and Community Development, a college prep high school for students who had dropped or been pushed out of the system. For the past eleven years she had been teaching and leading professional development in international schools in Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda and Togo.

Marcela Fuentes (PhD: Georgia State U / MFA: Iowa Writers Workshop) is the 2016–2017 James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow. Her stories have appeared in the Indiana Review, The Stoneslide Corrective, Vestal Review, and Juked, among others, and anthologized in Flash Fiction International (W.W. Norton), Best of the Web (Dzanc Books), and New Stories from the Southwest (U Ohio/Swallow Press). A native of south Texas, she is currently the Virginia Spencer Carr Fellow in Fiction at Georgia State University.

Barrett Swanson (MFA: U. of Wisconsin) is the 2016–2017 Halls Emerging Artist Fellow. He is the recipient of a 2015 Pushcart Prize, and his short fiction and essays have been distinguished as “notable” in the Best American Nonrequired Reading of 2014, the Best American Essays of 2014, and the Best American Essays of 2015. His work has appeared most recently in The Guardian, The New Republic, American Short Fiction, Boston Review, Dissent, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Point, Ninth Letter, and Mississippi Review, and is forthcoming in Pacific Standard, The Southern Review, and Orion.