People bravely write their hearts out every day in New Literary Project, across generations, & communities, & boundaries.
We drive social change by unleashing artistic power. Learn how.
Watch SpeakOut NewLit: First Ten Years, a short video documentary
“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
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.
2026 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Longlist Announced
Twenty-eight authors have been longlisted for the 2026 Joyce Carol Oates Prize by New Literary Project (NewLit). The annual $50,000 award honors a mid-career author of fiction in the midst of a burgeoning career, a distinguished writer who has emerged and is still emerging. The Prize celebrates past achievement and supports forthcoming work. The 2026 JCO Prize will be the eleventh such award.
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About the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
The Joyce Carol Oates Prize is named in honor of the preeminent author, and our colleague. In the past, Joyce served as Simpson Project Writer-in-Residence, and today she sits on the New Literary Project Board of Directors as an honorary member. NewLit gratefully acknowledges her inspiring, lifelong impact as peerless teacher and writer, an author beloved and admired by legions of students, writers, and readers around the country and the world. She embodies the Project’s most deeply held commitments to literature and literacy, arts and education, in order to enhance the lives of students, readers, and writers across generations and diverse communities. Learn More
Simpsonistas, Vol. 7: Tales from New Literary Project - Available Now
New Literary Project is delighted to announce the release of Simpsonistas, Vol. 7: Tales from New Literary Project, which highlights work from Joyce Carol Oates Prize Winners Jennine Capó Crucet and Willy Vlautin, 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.
Submissions Open for 2026 Jack Hazard Summer Fellows: $5,000 Summer Awards to Creative Writers Teaching High School
NewLit will award $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.
This year the fellowship is including poetry as a genre..
Since 2022, NewLit has awarded 38 Jack Hazard Fellowships to writers from 15 states around the country.
Applications for Summer 2026 open on November 15, 2025, and close on January 9, 2026, 11:59 PM Eastern.
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For more information about the fellowship, visit our Jack Hazard Fellowship Program page.
Scenes from SpeakOut NEWLIT 2025 and our Roadshow Events
New Literary Project was delighted to host 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Winners Jennine Capó Crucet & Willy Vlautin in November for the NewLit Roadshow.
We also released our new documentary, SpeakOut NewLit: First Ten Years and Simpsonistas, Vol. 7.
The Roadshow events included Via del NewLit, author talks at Cal and Orinda Books, and SpeakOut NewLit.
SEE PHOTOS: Scenes from the Roadshow
Meet our 2025 Bonnie Bonetti-Bell and Iris Starn Teaching Fellows
The New Literary Project is offering five Bonnie Bonetti-Bell Fellowships and Workshops and four Iris Starn Fellowships and Workshops in 2025. Our 2025 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 2025 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
2025 Winners of the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
Jennine Capó Crucet, of North Carolina, and Willy Vlautin, of Oregon, have been named the ninth and tenth Recipients of the 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prizes (JCO) awarded by New Literary Project (NewLit).
Each receives $50,000 on the occasion of NewLit’s tenth anniversary in 2025.
Read more about Jennine Capó Crucet.
Read more about Willy Vlautin.
WATCH THE INTERVIEW with the winners and Joyce Carol Oates and NewLit’s Joe Di Prisco.
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.
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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