2023 Summer Fishtrap Fellows

Since 1990, Fishtrap has awarded more than 150 Fellowships to new and emerging writers, many of whom have gone on to become award-winning authors and respected educators. A Fishtrap Fellowship includes full registration to the Summer Fishtrap Gathering of Writers, lodging, meals, and a featured reading during the week. Fishtrap is able to provide Fellowships through the generous support from individuals and foundations.

A Fishtrap Fellowship covers the cost of the seven-day conference including a five-day writing workshop, readings, activities, panel discussions, and special events. A Fishtrap Fellowship is valued at more than $1200, but more than that, it is an opportunity for emerging writers to build new friendships and a renewed sense of creative potential in an atmosphere of mentorship and community.

Meet the 2023 Summer Fishtrap Fellows

Francesca Jimenez is an essayist and fiction writer based in Los Angeles, born and raised in the city’s northeastern suburbs of San Gabriel Valley. She is pursuing an MFA in Fiction at the University of California, Riverside Palm Desert Low-Residency Program. Her work explores belonging and rejection through a lens of collective and intergenerational stories. She is also a rock climber, hiker, classically trained violist, and lover of live music. Learn more: francescajimenez.com/

Tochukwu Okafor is a storyteller and an electrical engineer. He is a Fiction MFA candidate at Emerson College and holds a master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a 2021 – 2023 Book Project Fellow at Lighthouse Writers’ Workshop, a 2023 Kimbilio Fellow, a 2023 Oxbelly Writers Retreat Fellow, a 2022 Ucross Foundation Fellow, a 2022 Kurt Brown Prize for Fiction winner, a 2021 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, a 2021 – 2022 GrubStreet Emerging Writer Fellow, a 2021 Gish Jen Fiction Fellow, an alumnus of the 2021 Tin House Workshop, and a 2018 Rhodes Scholar finalist. His first academic paper on Latin American literature will be published this summer in the annual print issue of the Latino Book Review. His fiction has appeared in the 2019 Best Small Fictions, the 2018 Best of the Net, and elsewhere. He has received scholarships, fellowships, grants, and residencies from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the John Anson Kittredge Fund, Aspen Words, Vermont Studio Center, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Atlantic Center for the Arts, the James Merrill House Residency, Iceland Writers Retreat, Ragdale Foundation, Anderson Center at Tower View, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts, Eckerd College, Worcester Arts Council, and elsewhere. He is at work on a story collection and a novel. He lives in Worcester, MA.

Lillian Emerick Valentine is a poet and farmer from western Oregon. She currently lives in Missoula, Montana where she is an MFA candidate, recipient of the Hugo scholarship and instructor of composition. Her work can be found in Black Fox, Call Me [Brackets], K’in and other literary magazines. She spends as much time as possible outside. Her favorite bird is a kingfisher.

2023 Fellowship Judge – Sharma Shields

Sharma Shields is the author of a short story collection Favorite Monster and two novels,The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac and The Cassandra. Sharma’s short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Electric Lit, Catapult, Slice, Slate, Fairy Tale Review, Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, Fugue, and have garnered such prizes as the 2020 PNBA Award, 2016 Washington State Book Award, the Autumn House Fiction Prize, the Tim McGinnis Award for Humor, a Grant for Artist Projects from Artist Trust, and the A.B. Guthrie Award for Outstanding Prose. She received her B.A. in English Literature from the University of Washington and her MFA from the University of Montana. Sharma runs a small press, Scablands Books, and is a contributing editor for Moss. A current employee of Wishing Tree Books in Spokane, Sharma has worked in independent bookstores and public libraries throughout Washington State. She lives with her husband (writer and graphic novelist Simeon Mills) and their two children.

Learn more about Sharma Shields.

Help us grow and maintain a rich, dynamic community of talented writers by becoming a part of this important program. If you would like to help fund one of our Fishtrap Fellows, please contact us.