2025 Jack Hazard Fellows

NewLit awards $5,000 Jack Hazard Fellowships to exceptionally promising and accomplished writers who are full-time high school educators. The Jack Hazard is intended to support these authors and enable them to spend summer working on their own literary projects—fiction, memoir, creative nonfiction.

We considered hundreds of applicants from more than 35 states, and there were many worthy, excellent candidates we wish we could have supported. We thank them for applying, hope they will apply again, and wish them success in their writing careers.

Since 2022, NewLit has awarded 38 Jack Hazard Fellowships to writers from 15 states around the country.

This Summer, we are pleased to award five 2025 Jack Hazards to:

Kristin Collier - St. Paul Academy and Summit School, St. Paul, MN; Kristin Collier's debut nonfiction book What Debt Demands is forthcoming with Grand Central Publishing.

Dallas Crow - Woodland Academy, College Park, GA; A life-long Midwesterner who grew up in small towns and graduated from Oberlin College, Dallas Crow now finds himself, much to his surprise, navigating the mild winters, sultry summers, and relentless traffic of North Central Georgia.

Will Ejzek - Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep Academy, Chicago, IL; Will Ejzak is a high school English teacher in Chicago. His writing has appeared in North American Review, Washington Square Review, and Cimarron Review, among others.

Molly Olguín - The Bush School, Seattle, WA; Molly Olguín is a queer writer, educator, and monster aficionado. Her collection The Sea Gives Up the Dead was chosen by Carmen Maria Machado for the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction.

Anjoli Roy - Punahou School, Honolulu, HI; Anjoli Roy (she/her) is a creative writer and high school English teacher in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. Anjoli is the author of the chapbook Enter the Navel: For the Love of Creative Nonfiction (The Operating System, 2020).

Read more about the Jack Hazard Fellowship. Read the full bios here:

Congratulations, Fiona

Praise for Highway Thirteen:

“Fiona McFarlane writes with psychological precision and a masterful sense of suspense. Each story is artfully constructed and the way they fit together, spanning seventy-eight years, is nothing short of dazzling. Fiona McFarlane’s book is a tour de force about the stories we tell, the surprising ways our lives connect, and the ripple effects of violence.”

―The Story Prize judges' citation

“McFarlane is a master at just about everything: dialogue, setting, comic timing . . . But her biggest accomplishment is creating an empathic bond with people whose lives are touched by unexplainable violence . . . McFarlane sets them off on journeys that are compulsively suspenseful and enormously readable.”

―Mary Ann Gwinn, Los Angeles Times

“However entertaining, McFarlane’s stories continually remind readers that behind true-crime stories’ escapist pleasure exist real death and human pain. Addictively engaging, profoundly serious fiction from an underappreciated master.”

―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Fiona McFarlane has been involved in New Literary Project for many years as advisor to our Bonetti-Bell Fellows. She s a beloved professor at UC Berkeley.

James and the Giant Book Club - Summer Edition

Will you join us in June for James and the Giant Book Club (Summer Edition)?

Our June Book Club will be reading the short story collection, The Consequences, by our 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Winner Manuel Muñoz. There are two locations that will host the discussion groups, and light refreshments will be served:

Berkeley - at the home of James Bell, June 7th

Livermore - at the home of Jean Shuler, June 8th

All groups are scheduled for a Zoom call with the author on June 11th at 6pm. Attendees donate $100 to support New Literary Project.

To receive an invite to one of the group discussions, please email Abby@newliteraryproject.org

New Literary Project is grateful for generous institutional support from philanthropic and corporate sponsors who, along with our many loyal individual donors, drive social change and make possible serving students, teachers, and writers across generations: Wood Family Foundation, Simpson PSB Fund, System Property, Literary Arts Emergency Fund through the Mellon Foundation, Rare Bird Books, Penguin Random House, Salesforce Foundation, Busby Communications, and the Miner Anderson Family Foundation.