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NEWLIT GOES TO ROME FOR LUNCH by guest writer Kristina Sepetys On Thursday, May 22, New Literary Project gathered its 2024–25 Iris Starn and Bonnie Bonetti-Bell Fellows at Via del Corso in Berkeley for an afternoon of celebration and connection. The event brought together this year’s Iris Starn Fellows, Isa Maloof and Rayjon Young (two graduate students in the MFA in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California), along with Bonetti-Bell Fellows Ryan Lackey and Edil Hassan (PhD candidates in UC Berkeley’s English Department). They were joined by former fellow andy king, NewLit board member James Bell, and Saint Mary’s College MFA in Creative Writing Program Director, Chris Arnold, and several NewLit staff. The UC Berkeley English department, a founding partner of NewLit, and Saint Mary’s are longtime institutional collaborators with NewLit. Chef Peter Chastain, owner of Via del Corso in Berkeley and a longtime and generous friend of the New Literary Project, closed his restaurant to the public to host the group and outdid himself with an Italian-inspired feast. Guests enjoyed a spread of antipasti misti—house made focaccia, a bean and preserved tuna salad, fresh asparagus, and marinated artichokes—before choosing between two standout mains: delicately braised cod with onions, San Marzano tomatoes, white wine, and basil, or handmade tagliatelle with salt-cured pork and creamy stracciatella. A bright lemon pudding topped with fresh strawberries brought the meal to a perfect close. Each fellow took a turn reflecting—honestly, passionately, and movingly—on their experience in the program. They spoke with generous insight and shared gratitude about how the fellowship has helped them and their students find and strengthen their voices. andrew david king’s remarks are representative of some of the commentary. andrew was a Simpson Fellow in 2023 and a Bonetti-Bell Fellow in 2024, both times at Mt. McKinley High School, inside John A. Davis Juvenile Hall in Contra Costa County. They’re currently a grad student in English at UC Berkeley and senior editor at ZYZZYVA. (Some of their students’ work and their own moving account of their time at McKinley can be found in Simpsonistas: Tales from New Literary Project. Vol. 5., the yearly anthology curated by NewLit and published and nationally distributed by Rare Bird.) “The work that the Project and its fellows are doing—helping our young people to thrive through the arts, to learn to live humanely through them--is of the utmost importance at a time when fascism, authoritarianism, and all kinds of intolerance are on a meteoric rise in this country. And I think you can feel that in the classroom, whether you're a teacher or a student. “ “I certainly felt it from inside Mt. McKinley last year, where armed probation officers would stroll into my classroom in the middle of a lesson--this sense that, in studying creative writing, we were trying to save something that was at risk, an endangered species, if you will, within the culture and ourselves. Though so much set me apart from my students--carceral status, race, class--we had that in common, and I'd like to think we knew that we did.” —andrew david king
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