Publicity Contact: chloe feffer, Program Manager, Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices
Phone: (213) 277-5755
Email: retreat@lambdaliterary.org
96 Emerging LGBTQ Writers to Join Lambda Literary’s 2026 Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices
New York, NY—For over 35 years, Lambda Literary has championed LGBTQIA+ books and authors based on its belief that lives are affirmed and culture preserved when our stories are written, published, and read. Since 2007, Lambda Literary has offered the Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices—the nation’s premier LGBTQIA+ writing residency, which brings together emerging poets, playwrights, screenwriters, essayists, novelists, cross-genre writers, and memoirists in a safe, welcoming, and love-centered community.
Our fellows have the opportunity to make connections, form a community, workshop writing under the tutelage of our talented faculty, attend a variety of panels and craft talks, and participate in a public reading of their work. This year, the Writers Retreat is holding a virtual program. In 2027, we plan to return to an in-person retreat. In order to expand our offerings and keep accessible offerings available, we have introduced a new program, The Creative Incubator for LGBTQ+ Writers.
Lambda Literary is pleased to announce the 2026 Fellows and Scholars to attend its prestigious Writers Retreat.
Fiction
The 2026 Fellows to study fiction under Alejandro Varela’s tutelage are:
Ash Guerro
Ayomikun Paseda
Clare Sears
Dana Baylous
Eleni Gemitzis
Emely Taveras
Jaclyn Grimm
Jonathan Jackson
Ly Rosengard
Wangeci Gitau
z kennedy-lopez
Nonfiction
The 2026 Fellows to study nonfiction under Anaïs Duplan’s tutelage are:
Adam Arca
Brian Watson
Eden Kinkaid
Em Marinelli
Ethan Trinh
huiyin 徽音 zhou 周
Jay Kibble
m. mick powell
Rae Atakpa
Rey Resendez
Valentine Freeman
Playwriting
The 2026 Fellows to study playwriting under Sharifa Yazmeen’s tutelage are:
Axel Renée Winget
Elian M. D. Scott
Emily Russell
India Choquette
Kasti Niní
Linnea Valdivia
Olga El
Patrick De León
Phillip Gregory Burke
Shawntai McCall-Brown
Tanner Forbes
Yasna Khademian
Poetry
The 2026 Fellows to study poetry under Faylita Hicks’s tutelage are:
Elina Katrin
Emily Portillo
Jordan Stanley
Kris Cho
Micaela Kaibni Raen
Miguel Martin Perez
Norman Tran
Rose Jenny
Shakeema Smalls
Siobhan Jean-Charles
Xochi Quetzali Cartland
Zain Murdock
Romantic Fiction
The 2026 Fellows to study Romantic Fiction under Casey McQuiston’s tutelage are:
Andrea Fullington
Ashni Mehta
Aurora Hurd
Carolina Alencar
EA Crawley
Haven Steel
Helen Everbach
Jim Berg
Leah Douglas
Leena Sulahri
Unmana
Vincent Shu
Screenwriting
The 2026 Fellows to study screenwriting under Desta Tedros Reff’s tutelage are:
Ashunda Norris
Brittany Fonte
DJ Hills
Edlin Ortiz
Jae Nichelle
Jamie Fellows
Joshua Labata
Katie Lane Dei
Lulenoxx
Majiq Vu Mai
Renn Tan
Sav Solorio
Speculative Fiction
The 2026 Fellows to study Speculative Fiction under Andrea Hairston’s tutelage are:
Alejandra Alexander
aleksander aleksander
Cecil Fenn
Gabrielle Bleu
Gabrielle Rodriguez Gonzalez
Hayden M. Knight
LP Kindred
Marianne Xenos
Nnamdi Vin-Anuonye
Ocean Wei
Selah Amador Woessner
Sofie Riley
Young Adult Fiction
The 2026 Fellows to study young adult fiction under Anna-Marie McLemore’s tutelage are:
Alex Abraham
Ariana Brown
Beste Filiz
Danielle Pignataro
Divine Byrd
Galen Bunting
Grace Ward
Jaimee Garbacik
Maribel Martínez
Mel Onstad
Shannon Rigney
Thalia Stafford
Scholarship Winners
The following donor-funded scholarships provide Retreat Fellows and Writers in Residence with financial support to attend the Writers Retreat without cost. Recipients are selected from a myriad of applicants who meet each scholarship’s respective criteria. We are grateful to all of our supporters who make this possible.
The Academy Scholarship
The Academy Scholarship, offered by the Academy of American Poets, supports women and/or femme poets who attend the 2026 Writers Retreat in the poetry genre.
The Academy Scholarship recipients are Micaela Kabni Raen and Rose Jenny.
Micaela Kaibni Raen is a Palestinian American femme-dyke mother from the Little Arabia community in California. She is the creator of Queer Tatreez, a style of visual poetics inspired by Tatreez, Indigenous Palestinian embroidery. For queer/trans Palestinians, Tatreez has been our sacred hoop threading queer/trans continuance and Palestinian sumud within our stars, lands, rivers, and seas. Stitching eco-feminist poetics and Indigenous textiles, she is breaking through a technomediated world to unite queer/trans communities across heritage.
With our communities facing devastating violence, it is time to build movements that bring us together for collective action. As a Palestinian, living without the luxury of hope, Micaela sees our collective creativity as active resistance and our cultural stories as urgent archive. For over forty years she has advocated for Palestinians, Indigenous and displaced peoples, women, queer/trans youth, and those affected by HIV/AIDS. Recognized by the Lesbian Herstory Archives, she shares deep connections with the Radius of Arab American Writers, Inc., ACT UP!, Queer Nation, and more.
A Tin House Alum, her work is featured in Bint el Nas, Mizna, Black Warrior Review, Sinister Wisdom, Yellow Medicine Review, EPOCH, The Poetry of Arab Women, Heaven Looks Like Us, and Homosexual Intifada.
Instagram ; Instagram ; Linktree
Rose Jenny is a trans poet, playwright, avid baker, and commander of goblins. She has received support from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Tin House. All her work can be found at rosejenny.com or @roseconnorjenny.
The Cody John Laplante Scholarship
This full scholarship supports writers who uplift marginalized voices through creative and compassionate actions, continuing Cody’s legacy of empathy and inclusion.
The Cody John Laplante Scholarship honors a talented poet and compassionate individual who passed away at 27. Cody’s work, including the multimedia project, Triple Slash: ///, a collaboration with Nigel Nolan, preserves his artistic legacy and enduring impact. As an ESL teacher for Somali immigrants in Portland, Maine, Cody went beyond the classroom – he often shared meals and slept in parks with those experiencing homelessness. He formed deep connections with individuals whom society often overlooked.
“Art seduces us, relieves us. We know that we don’t believe in all of the same things but we have faith that we believe in THIS same thing. Let’s share what we make with others. Let’s engage in the beauty of being.“ – Cody John Laplante
The 2026 Cody John Laplante Scholarship recipient is Renn Tan.
Renn Tan speaks six languages, but not their mother tongue. Before moving to LA, they ran a small indie bookstore selling banned books to closeted teens. Growing up LGBTQ+ in a Muslim country means, of course, they write about conditional love. Their stories feature characters whose identities directly conflict with their environment.
Renn is a graduate of USC’s Screenwriting MFA program. Their work has won Best Feature Screenplay at Slamdance and the Dallas International Film Festival. They are honored to be an ISA Top 25 Screenwriter to Watch in 2026, a Stowe Narrative Labs Fellow, and, now, a Lambda Literary Fellow.
When they’re not writing, you can find Renn @ferdietherock on Instagram.
Lambda Literary Pilate Dead Scholarship
The Lambda Literary Pilate Dead scholarship is offered to one Black writer in any genre, in honor of the character Pilate Dead from Toni Morrison’s 1977 novel Song of Solomon.
The 2026 recipient of the Pilate Dead Scholarship is Ashunda Norris.
Ashunda is Black feminist filmmaker, poet and photographer from the backwoods of Georgia. Her art centers the complexities of Black womxn through the lenses of Afrofuturism, fantasy, southern goth & Afrosurrealism. Ashunda has written, directed, and produced several films, including her most recent multi-award-winning cinematic gesture, MINO: A Diasporic Myth; now streaming on kweliTV and housed in Indiana University’s Black Film Center Archive. An inaugural Torch Literary Arts Screenwriting fellow, Ashunda led a table read of her debut feature script Crossed Kalunga By The Stars. A 2021 ARRAY Liberated Territory fellow, Ashunda’s films have screened at festivals across the globe including Kampala, Uganda; Nairobi, Kenya; London, England; Berlin, Germany, and Amsterdam. Her honors include fellowships and artistic support from Cave Canem, the California Arts Council, Hurston/Wright Foundation, Brooklyn Poets, Storyknife and Tin House. Ashunda is the founder of Sibyls Palace; a Black womxn centered art house that produces oppositional cinema & photography. Her art has exhibited in the TRYST Art Fair, OUTMusem and Red Spring’s Afrofuturism Curating the End of the World. For more, visit ashunda.com or @shundasaid_ on insta.
Emerge Editorial Scholarship
The Lambda Literary Emerge Editorial Scholarship recognizes a Fellow who has an interest in literary editing and whose past work shows considerable promise. The 2026 Emerge Editorial Scholarship Fellow will edit this year’s Emerge Anthology. The Lambda Literary Emerge Editorial Scholarship recognizes that if we want LGBTQIA+ writers to feel at home in the literary landscape and for publishing to be full of our many perspectives, we must provide LGBTQIA+ writers the opportunity to learn about and take part in the editorial process.
The 2026 recipient of the Lambda Literary Emerge Editorial Scholarship is huiyin 徽音 zhou 周.
huiyin zhou 徽音 (they/ta/她) is a diasporic bird and ordinary alien shapeshifting in relation to water, body, and land. Born and raised in China’s industrial hub of Dongguan and a visa-holder on unceded Eno land (Durham, NC), they take photos, create exhibits, sing, write, make jokes, DJ, and dance with friends. Their multilingual/cross-disciplinary work is rooted in queer kinship, collaborative praxis, and relational aesthetics. huiyin co-directs the Chinese Artists and Organizers (CAO) Collective 离离草, co-curates visual art at NorthStar Church of the Arts, and dreams from their studio at Queen Street Magic Boat.
huiyin is a Lambda Literary Nonfiction + EMERGE Editorial Fellow (2026), Abode Press Nonfiction Fellow (2026), Culture Push Fellow for Utopian Practice (2025), and writing fellow at The Seventh Wave. huiyin has been awarded residencies at Pedantic Arts (PA), The Luminary (MO), BRIClab: Contemporary Art (NY), Vox Populi (PA), and School of the Alternative (NC). Their work has been published by Massachusetts Review, positions: asia critique, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Sine Theta Magazine, Scholar & Feminist Online, and more.
huiyin recently published their multimedia photobook nostalgia is the ghost of care 在未来怀念一片云彩 (Homie House Press/kawan pan, June 2026).
@huiyin.zhou
The Jeanne Córdova Words Scholarship
The Jeanne Córdova Words Scholarship, in memory of the beloved activist and author, is given annually. The scholarship is awarded to a lesbian-identified queer or trans woman of color working on text with lesbian content in any of the workshop categories excluding poetry.
The 2026 Jeanne Córdova Words Scholarship recipient is Alejandra Alexander.
Alejandra Alexander is a writer and visual artist. Her work has appeared in the anthologies Weaving Our Stories published by Daraja Press and Culinary Mestizaje published by University of Texas Press. She co-wrote the screenplay Without You that was Quarter-Finalist in the Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards Diversity XIV Competition. She is a Gemini sun, Pisces moon, Cancer rising who lives in the Pacific North West with her dog L’agatha. IG: @outtak_es
The Justin Chin Memorial Scholarship
Sponsored by Alexander Chee and Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, The Justin Chin Memorial Scholarship is offered annually in memory of the late author Justin Chin and supports queer, Asian American Pacific Islanders writers who write queer content in any genre.
The 2026 Justin Chin Memorial Scholarship recipient is Joshua Labata.
Joshua Labata is a writer/producer from Paranaque, Philippines. Raised as an immigrant and an orphan, he writes just that: the funny, beautiful, and heartbreaking intersection of immigration and death. Writing has kept him from losing his mind, so he writes to help other people not lose their minds. He believes that absurdity is the best way to find intimacy today. Ranging from TV to film to theatre, he’s developed projects for a host of production companies and theatre companies, and his work has finalized at competitions like Academy Nichol, Slamdance, and Antigravity Academy’s Development Incubator. He’s written and produced two independent features, over 25 shorts, and has the blood pressure to prove it.
Lili Elbe Scholarship
Honoring the life and legacy of transgender pioneer Lili Elbe, the annual Lili Elbe Scholarship recognizes a trans Lambda Literary Fellow in any genre whose work shows considerable talent and promise. A Danish trans woman, Lili Elbe was one of the earliest recipients of gender confirmation surgery. The scholarship is sponsored by David Ebershoff, whose first novel about Elbe, The Danish Girl, won the Lambda Literary Award for transgender fiction and was adapted into an Oscar-winning film.
The 2026 Lili Elbe Scholarship recipient is Axel Winget.
Axel Renée Winget (they/he) is a queer, transmasculine playwright, drama therapist, and educator based on Kauaʻi (PhD, MFA, RDT). Their work explores the intersections of gender, spirituality, desire, and survival, grounded in the belief that theatre can function not only as storytelling, but as a site of collective reckoning, care, and imagination—particularly for queer and trans communities shaped by religious trauma, migration, and systemic erasure.
Axel is the founder of Queer Healing Space, a creative-healing practice rooted in consent, imagination, and 2SLGBTQIA+ MVPFFAF liberation. Their plays blend dark comedy, ritual dramaturgy, documentary elements, and embodied storytelling, often using nonlinear structures where humor and irreverence coexist with grief, longing, and faith. Axel’s work has been developed and presented with Highways Performance Space and SORORITY Theatre Company (Los Angeles), and in festivals, universities, and community contexts in the U.S. and Europe. They are currently developing OXYMORMON: A Queer Utah Story.
You can find Axel meditating and waxing poetic in the rainforest, communing with sea turtles, or dancing to the new Cardi B album in their living room with their wife and a riveted audience of two kittens (Buffy Summers and Winnifred Sanderson), alongside “grandma”” cat—their geriatric-forever-baby-and-always-queen, Eloise.
@queerhealing.space | queerhealing.space
The Stemmler/Dennis LGBT& Scholarship
The Stemmler/Dennis LGBT& Award, established by Sigma Tau Delta members Dr. Kevin Stemmler and Dr. Larry Dennis, honors exceptional creative and critical works that represent or celebrate the LGBTQ+ community. This annual award addresses the historical marginalization of LGBTQ+ voices in academia, providing recognition for both creative and scholarly contributions. The award’s name incorporates an ampersand, inspired by GLAAD’s “&Together” campaign, symbolizing inclusivity and unity among diverse identities.
In partnership with Lambda Literary, LGBT& Award-winners in the “creative” category will be short-listed to attend Lambda Literary’s Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, further supporting and amplifying LGBTQ+ narratives in literature. One LGBT& Award-winner each year will be selected to attend the Writers Retreat.
The 2026 recipient of the Stemmler/Dennis LGBT& Scholarship is Ash Guerro.
Ash Guerrero is an undergraduate senior studying English at the University of Texas at Arlington with minors in sociology and creative writing. They are a lifelong writer based in Fort Worth, Texas, who creates short stories centered around feminism, queerness and family. They are also a proud member of the Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society. Besides writing and reading, they are a fan of drawing, playing videogames, and nerding out online.
The Richard Labonté Scholarship
Sponsored by Ed Moreno, The Richard Labonté Memorial Scholarship is offered annually in memory of the late writer and editor Richard Labonté. This opportunity supports queer writers working in the book trade, especially those who work to foster and uplift queer voices in literature.
The 2026 recipient of the Richard Labonté Scholarship is Elina Katrin.
Elina Katrin is a Syrian-Russian immigrant writer. She’s the author of Overwintered (Trio House Press, 2027) and a poetry chapbook If My House Has a Voice (Newfound, 2023). Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, Shō Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. A recipient of scholarships and fellowships from Lambda Literary, Vermont Studio Center, and Periplus, she works and organizes with Mizna as an Assistant Editor. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University and currently lives in Los Angeles, CA, with a dream and her cardigan. You can find more about Elina on her website (https://elinatkatrin.com/poetry) or Instagram @elinatkatrin, where she either overshares or posts nothing at all for extensive periods of time.
Hachette’s Five
Hachette Book Group’s scholarships support a total of five queer and trans writers with various historically marginalized identities. Those over the age of 50, North American Indigenous/Native American writers, a Writer who lives in a rural setting, a trans writer, and a trans writer who lives in a rural setting.
Hachette’s Writer Over 50
The 2026 recipient of the Hatchette’s 5 Writer Over 50 Scholarship is Marianne Xenos.
Marianne Xenos is a writer and visual artist living in western Massachusetts. She creates stories about shapeshifters, dragons and disco. She has an MFA from the Studio for Interrelated Media at Mass. College of Art and is a member of an artists’ cooperative in Amherst, MA. After focusing on visual art for decades, she published her first speculative fiction story just before her sixty-fifth birthday. Marianne’s publications include The Future Fire, The Underdog’s Rise, Orion’s Belt, MetaStellar, and the anthologies Claw Machine and Winding Paths. In 2022 she was a first-place winner in the Writers of the Future contest and in 2025 received the Massachusetts Creative Individuals grant. Marianne lives with a formerly feral cat named after a superhero.
Hachette’s North American Indigenous Writer Scholarship
The 2026 recipient of the Hachette’s 5 North American Indigenous Writer Scholarship is Kasti Niní.
Kasti Niní (kast’a’döní) is an Indigenous (bot’ähi hñahñú + ah kin pech maya) writer, director and performer, both for the stage and the screen. They are committed to uplifting Native American, Indigenous and Latine stories, and their intersections with womanhood, neurodivergence, mental health, queerness and gender diversity; often, all of them at once.
As an artist, they often interrogate the aftermath of trauma, and explore the wild space where resilience, reclamation and hope meet. In their craft and every day life, they seek to re-indigenize creative spaces and practices, while making room for authentic, nuanced and truthful forms of representation.
They are thrilled to be a Lambda Literary Fellow and to keep queering more Indigenous stories into existence. Niní would like to thank the writing teachers who have nurtured their craft, and the friends who have nurtured their soul.
Outside of theatre and film, Niní enjoys being bad at new languages, making hyper-specific book recommendations, all things nature, and spending time with their twin cats, Paloma and Margarita.
You can find out more about them and their work on their website (kastidoni.com) or on Instagram (@kastidoni).
Hachette’s Rural Writer Scholarship
The 2026 recipient of the Hachette’s 5 Rural Writer Scholarship is Beste Filiz.
Beste Filiz (she/her) was born in Istanbul, a city where two continents meet. She was a child asylum seeker and refugee at three years old when her family was forced to flee Türkiye to London, England. She is now a Turkish-British-American writer for young people. She received her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Hamline University in 2025. She was a recipient of the 2023 Walter Dean Myers Grant from We Need Diverse Books and a mentee in the 2025 We Need Diverse Books Mentorship Program. Beste received a fellowship from the Center of Arts and Social and Justice at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has received scholarships from Lambda Literary and Tin House. Beste got to be a writer in residence at Storyknife for a month. She lives in Northern California with her non-binary partner and three cats. She loves to walk the shelter dogs at her local animal rescue. You can find her on Instagram @beste_filiz_writes
Hachette’s Trans Writer Scholarship
The 2026 recipient of the Hachette’s 5 Trans Writer Scholarship is Majiq Mai.
Majiq Vu Mai (magic/they/he/we; b. 1996, Charlotte, NC) is a multiplicity of madness, writing themselves alive with the words they hold inside of them and the words they have not found yet. Their writing sits at the center of a non-linear vortex that (trans)gresses the borders between memory, death, and adaptation. As a SouthernTransQueerBipolar writer of Black-American and Southeast Asian lineage, Mai embraces writing as an act of self-recovery: they write to collect the pieces of themselves scattered across various dimensions and (re)member their limitless possibilities through the creative act of storytelling.
Mai is currently an MFA Candidate in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts at the University of Baltimore, where they serve as an adjunct professor for college-level writing. Their Pushcart Prize nominated essay, “The Metamorphosis,” was published in Yellow Arrow Journal’s issue UNFURL in Spring 2025. They are the cultural steward of Writing Ourselves Alive (@writingourselvesalive), a transformative arts academy transmuting oppressive realities through the written word, and The Deadname Archives (@thedeadnamearchives), a (trans)dimensional archive honoring and elevating the ancestral spirits of deadnames. You can find Mai shapeshifting and talking to the trees on IG @themagicferryman.
Hachette’s Trans Rural Writer Scholarship
The 2026 recipient of the Hachette’s 5 Trans Rural Writer Scholarship wishes to remain Anonymous.
Lambda Literary’s Financial Support
Lambda Literary received support from many generous donors in order to offer all requested financial support to those who need it. Thanks to community support, Lambda Literary has been able to provide $50,000 in tuition support to the class of 2026. We are proud that we were able to ensure every accepted writer could attend regardless of financial status, and that no one declined attendance due to tuition costs in 2026.
To learn more about the Fellows and Writers in Residence, visit our website.
In community,
chloe feffer
Program Manager
Lambda Literary
