“NewLit is the antidote for despair.”
—Erika Krouse, winner of the 2026 Joyce Carol Oates Prize
Watch our new short video documentary, Rising Roadshow: NewLit ‘26, to learn more about what we do and how we support arts education.
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work…. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom. Like art.”
— TONI MORRISON
Scenes from Rising Roadshow
New Literary Project was delighted to host 2026 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Winner Erika Krouse October 26 - November 1 for NewLit’s Rising Roadshow.
We also released our new documentary, Rising Roadshow NewLit ‘26 and Simpsonistas, Vol. 8.
The Roadshow events included Via del NewLit, Erika’s author talk at Cal and Orinda Books, and Homecoming, our biggest event of the year, at Saint Mary’s College of California.
See our individual events pages for photos. We’ll be adding more as they come in.
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Applications Open Nov 13 for the 2027 Jack Hazard Fellowship
Coming Soon
On Friday, Nov 13, NewLit will begin accepting applications for the 2027 Jack Hazard Fellowships.
Jack Hazard Fellows are fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and memoir writers who teach full time in an accredited high school in the United States. NewLit provides a $5,000 award that enables these creative writers who teach to focus on their writing for a summer.
Meet our 2026 Jack Hazard Fellows
$5,000 Summer Awards to Creative Writers Teaching High School
NewLit is awarding $5,000 Jack Hazard Fellowships to seven exceptionally promising and accomplished writers who are full-time high school educators. The Jack Hazard Fellowship is intended to support these writers and enable them to spend summer working on their own literary projects—fiction, memoir, creative nonfiction — and for the first time, poetry.
Since 2022, NewLit has awarded forty-five Jack Hazard Fellowships to writers from seventeen states around the country.
For more information about the fellowship, visit our Jack Hazard Fellowship Program page.
Clockwise from top left, the fellows, the high schools where they teach, and and their summer projects: Bea Chang, The Bush School - Seattle, WA, Everything We Couldn't Be (Creative Nonfiction); Emily Cinquemani, SC Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities - Greenville, SC, Open Orbit (Poetry); James Klise, CICS Northtown Academy - Chicago, IL, Wilderness Grace (Fiction); Brittany Rogers, Cass Technical High School - Detroit, MI, Ribboned Together (Poetry); Luisa Muradyan, Pembroke Hills School - Kansas City, MO, The Ministry of Loneliness (Poetry); Nicole Lozano Simonsen, School of Engineering & Sciences - Sacramento, CA, Paper Baby: Stories (Fiction); Ambalila Hemsell, Annie Wright Schools - Tacoma, WA, What is Empathy But An Animal (Poetry).
Simpsonistas, Vol. 8: Tales from New Literary Project
Coming Soon
New Literary Project is delighted to announce the upcoming release of Simpsonistas, Vol. 8: Tales from New Literary Project, which highlights work from Joyce Carol Oates Prize Winner Erika Krouse, as well as Joyce Carol Oates herself, and a host of distinguished authors connected to NewLit. Represented by their fiction, poetry, and non fiction, they appear alongside high school–age aspiring writers from NewLit creative writing workshops.
Simpsonistas, Vol. 8 will be available for pre-order soon.
Read an excerpt from the introduction to vol. 8 by Laura Cogan.
Congratulations to 2026 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Winner Erika Krouse
Erika Krouse, of Colorado, is the eleventh recipient of the Joyce Carol Oates Prize awarded by New Literary Project. The author receives $50,000. Her most recent publication is a book of short stories, Save Me, Stranger (Flatiron Books). Prize recipients are emerged and continually emerging writers of major consequence—short stories and/or novels—at the relative midpoint of a burgeoning career.
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photo credit: David Manak
Meet our 2026 Bonnie Bonetti-Bell and Iris Starn Teaching Fellows
The New Literary Project is offering five Bonnie Bonetti-Bell Fellowships and Workshops and six Iris Starn Fellowships and Workshops in 2026.
Our 2026 Teaching Fellows will conduct creative writing workshops offered to young people throughout the Bay Area through partner organizations such as Girls, Inc. of Alameda County, East Bay School of Performing Arts, Mt. McKinley, Northgate, Albany, and other high schools.
For more information about the teaching fellowships and to meet our 2026 Teaching Fellows, visit our program pages below.
About Bonnie Bonetti-Bell
Bonnie Bonetti-Bell (1945 – 2019) wrote and read her heart out as soon as she could read and hold a pencil. For most of her life, she read at least one book per week, and she was a compelling storyteller both as a writer and public speaker. Learn More
Our Story
New Literary Project invests in students & teachers, readers & authors, and it inspires and equips writers across the generations to write their hearts out. NewLit offers writing workshops free of charge for underserved younger writers; celebrates storytellers and storytelling through a major national award to a mid-career author of fiction (the Joyce Carol Oates Prize); and makes possible readings, events, and publication in our annual anthology of Project-connected authors, Simpsonistas.
New Literary Project came together in 2015 in partnership between the University of California, Berkeley, English Department, the world’s foremost English Department, in the world’s leading public university, and altruistic community leaders in the Bay Area.
Writing Workshops
New Literary Project leads creative writing workshops at high schools and afterschool programs throughout the Bay Area. The majority of the teenagers in our workshops will be the first in their families to attend college.
Jack Hazard Fellowships
Jack Hazard Fellows are fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and memoir writers who teach full time in an accredited United States high school. We provide a $5,000 award that enables these creative writers who teach to focus on their writing for a summer.
Simpsonistas
Simpsonistas highlights fiction, poetry, essays, and conversation by many brilliant associates of New Literary Project. Authors include teenagers published for the first time alongside distinguished award-winning authors.
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