NEWLIT GOES TO ROME FOR LUNCH
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.
Clockwise from top left: Edil Hassan, Ryan Lackey, Rayjon Briscoe Young, Diane Del Signore, Chris Arnold, Joe Di Prisco, Andrew David King, Chef Peter Chastain (standing), NewLit Board members James Bell (with hat) and Frank Starn.
Chef Peter Chastain, owner of Via del Corso in Berkeley and a 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.
Pictured clockwise on the left are the 2025 Bonnie Bonetti-Bell Fellows, grad students from UC Berkeley, English Department: Camille Santana Considine, Edil Hassan, Drew Kiser, Laura Ritland, and Ryan Lackey.
Pictured clockwise on the right are the 2025 Iris Starn Fellows, grad students from Saint Mary’s College of California, Creative Writing Department: Isa Maloof, Genay Markham, Rayjon Briscoe Young, and Courtney Pazin.
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 his students’ work and his own moving account of his 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 NewLit 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.”
Teenage Creative Writing Workshop Participants pictured are from Emery High School, Girls Inc of Alameda County and Albany High School. The NewLit fellows teach creative writing workshops across the Bay Area including at Mt. McKinley High School, inside John A. Davis Juvenile Hall in Contra Costa County.
Andy talked about the challenges of this kind of work and why it’s motivating, “One of the challenges—or maybe just facts—of working with incarcerated students is that they have little to prove or lose, while you, the instructor, have everything to prove: your credibility, the value of poetry. They're wards of the state; you're a stranger. What could you possibly say that matters? So you start from scratch, no assumptions, no easy cliches. You have to prove why literature matters. And that has an incredibly clarifying and salutary effect on both the writing and teaching of it.”
The work can require creative, sensitive teaching strategies. As Andy explained, “In-class generative exercises are a staple of my pedagogy. Resistance is common—especially in juvenile hall, at first. But in both of my Mt. McKinley classes, students eventually lowered their defenses. Everyone ended up writing and sharing aloud. Together, we created a space of collective safety—a reprieve from the sadness and violence of incarceration and the world. If nothing else, I hope they left knowing that writing, even there, is an act of agency, always available to them.”
Nonprofits talk about “impact.” In our work, that can mean a student from the Girls Inc writing workshop, maybe still learning English, maybe hesitant to speak at all, telling an instructor that during one of our workshops, she found her voice. And that voice, once awakened, led her to ask other important questions, like What is a person without a voice? When people who haven’t typically been in the center of the conversation begin to speak and be heard, dynamics shift. Confidence grows, perspectives widen, and the conversation itself begins to transform. That transformation doesn’t stop with this one student. It ripples outward. The young writers who teach in our programs, often navigating uncertain paths in their own creative careers, leave changed too: more grounded, more connected, more certain that their words matter.
This is why we support writers across generations and create space for storytelling in communities that haven’t always had access to literary opportunity. Because when someone finds their voice and the ability to express themselves and be heard, that has the power to change a lot more than just their own life. It can alter the way we all listen, speak, imagine what’s possible, and make that possibility reality.
Teenage Creative Writing Workshop Participants pictured are from Girls Inc of Alameda County and Emery High School. 2025 Iris Starn Fellow Rayjon Briscoe Young is pictured at the far right,