Simpson Fellows — New Literary Project

Bonetti-Bell Workshops & Fellowship

The Bonnie Bonetti-Bell Fellows are extraordinary creative writing teachers who are graduate students in the University of California, Berkeley, English Department. They are selected in consultation with New Literary Project and assigned to conduct workshops for traditionally overlooked fledgling teenage and younger authors in a variety of school and afterschool settings. The workshops are subsidized by New Literary Project in partnership with Berkeley and offered free of charge. From 2017-2023, these workshops and fellowships were named the Simpson Fellowship and Simpson Workshops. We are grateful for those years of support. Moving forward in 2024, they have been renamed as the Bonetti-Bell Workshops and Fellowship after Bonnie Bonetti-Bell.

One of these settings is Girls Inc. of Alameda County, where 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Prize winner Danielle Evans recently spoke.

Workshop students and Bonetti-Bell Fellows are often published in the annual, internationally distributed anthology of Project-related authors: Simpsonistas. These writers appear alongside distinguished award-winning authors affiliated with the Project.

NewLit is pleased to recognize this year’s fellows who will be conducting the following workshops:

Girls Inc:

* Uttara C. Chaudhuri

* Edil Hassan

Mt McKinley High School:

* Drew V. Kiser

Northgate High School:

* Ryan Lackey

Albany High School:

* Julian Robles

Learn more about Bonnie Bonetti-Bell

Spring 2026

Bonetti-Bell Fellows

Uttara C. Chaudhuri (Girls Inc. Alameda County)

Uttara C. Chaudhuri is a PhD Candidate in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley, and a creative writing teacher. She is trying to write an intellectual history of aesthetic labor in anti-colonial India—in addition, she enjoys cooking, walking and watching Bollywood films. She serves on the board of New Literary Project.

Edil Hassan (Girls Inc. Alameda County)

Edil Hassan is the author of Dugsi Girl (Akashic Press, 2021). Winner of the Cave Canem Starshine and Clay fellowship and a finalist for the Brunel African Poetry Prize, their work has appeared in Guernica, the Kenyon Review, Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. Hassan graduated from the MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis where they worked as a teaching fellow. Their poetry manuscript explores film, historical amnesia, and the limits of romance. Currently a PhD student at UC Berkeley, Hassan studies Black poetics.

Drew Kiser (Mt. McKinley High School; Contra Costa County Juvenile Hall)

Hailing from the wet and wild state of Virginia, Drew Kiser is a PhD candidate in English at the University of California, Berkeley, exploring the affective history of fossil fuels in Victorian literature and contemporary American film. Before beginning his career in academia, Drew worked as a baker, farmer, teacher, and political consultant in West Virginia, France, South Africa, and Washington, D.C., respectively.

Ryan Lackey (Northgate High School)

Ryan Lackey is a writer, critic, and PhD candidate in English at the University of California, Berkeley. His criticism and fiction have appeared in Post45 Contemporaries, Los Angeles Review of Books, Joyland, and elsewhere.

Julian Robles (Albany High School)

Julian Robles is a writer raised in California. His work is published in AGNI, The Best American Short Stories, The Drift, and Washington Square Review, among others. He is a former Fulbright Research Fellow and is currently a PhD candidate in English at UC Berkeley.