Announcing our New Voices Fellows

Four promising writers were awarded the Emerging Writers Festivals New Voices Fellowship in 2019. Their fellowship included a full tuition scholarship to the Emerging Writers Festival in Old Town on August 16 - 18, 2019.

The review team received and reviewed over ten applications for just three fellowships, and are thrilled to announce the class of fellows below:

Tracy Cross was awarded the Boston Accent Literary Journal Prize in 2016. Her work has appeared in several anthologies and magazines including, Summer Shorts, Big Book of Bootleg Horror and D'Evolution Z Horror Magazine. An active member of the Horror Writers Association and Ladies of Horror Fiction, the review committee thought she was “very imaginative and well thought out” in her application.

PEN America staff unanimously selected Ofelia Montelongo as their PEN America New Voices Fellow. Montelongo is a bilingual writer originally from Mexico. Her work has been published in Latino Book Review, Los Acentos Review, Rio Grande Review, Ponder Review and elsewhere. She is currently reading for Potomac Review and she is the 2019 Writer’s Center Undiscovered Voices Fellow.  

From Atlanta, Georgia Smith recently graduated from Elon University with her Bachelor of Arts in literature. She hopes to pursue fiction or playwriting and is excited to grow as a writer here in Alexandria. Smith shows “strong potential” in her fiction and was described as “one of the most sensitive and literate poets and prose writers” by her reference Scott Proudfit.

The fellowship was supported by Old Town Books. PEN America, and Visit Alexandria. We hope to make more available in 2020!