She teaches creative writing at Barnard College and The School of The New York Times, and is currently at work on an essay collection and her second novel. In recognition of her work, Zaina was awarded the Arab Women/Migrants from the Middle East fellowship at Jack Jones Literary Arts and named a Champion of Pride by The Advocate. She holds an MA in international affairs from Columbia University and an MFA from the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, VICE, BuzzFeed, Granta, Guernica, The Believer, Harper’s Bazaar and Virginia Quarterly Review. Zaina Arafat is a Palestinian-American writer and the author of the novel, You Exist Too Much, which won a 2021 Lambda Literary Award and was named Roxane Gay's favorite book of 2020. Coeditor of The Echoing Ida Collection (Feminist Press, 2021), Alabi lives in Chicago, IL. Alabi has received support from MacDowell, Pink Door, and Tin House. Their work appears in The Atlantic, Boston Review, Poetry, Beloit Poetry Journal, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. Kemi Alabi is the author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award. They are currently a Litowitz MFA+MA student in poetry at Northwestern University. His work has appeared in The Nation, The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Mizna, and elsewhere. Their poetry debut Birthright (Button Poetry) won the Arab American Book Award and the Big Other Book Award, and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. George Abraham (they/he) is a Palestinian-American poet, performance artist, and engineer who was born on unceded Timucuan lands (Jacksonville, FL). – Catherine Staples 2022 Fellows and Scholars 2022 Fellows The alert expressions distilled for me the essence of Sewanee: a readiness to be delighted, surprised, and engaged. During readings, I loved glancing down the rows. At Sewanee, you are in the presence of distinct lyric voices and true storytellers.

But all of that changes in an instant on the Mountain. Much of what we do as writers we do alone, to the tick of our home clocks, guided by writers with whom we mostly keep company on the page.

Circles of Hope by Karen Lynn Williams