Housed within Haymarket Books, the Writing Freedom Fellowship aims to elevate the essential voices and contributions of writers impacted by the carceral system. About to enter its third year, the fellowship is awarded to 20 emerging and established poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers annually.

 The 2025 Fellows Reading celebrates the fellowship’s second cohort and features 13 writers along with a special message from fiction writer Deesha Philyaw, who served on the 2025 selection committee. Read more about the 2025 Writing Freedom fellows at https://writing-freedom.org/fellows/2025 and follow their work.

***Register through Ticket Tailor to receive a link to the live-streamed video on the day of the event. This event will also be recorded and captioning will be provided.***

Speakers:

B Batchelor (he/him) is a poet and writer based in Minnesota. He has won multiple awards from PEN America and was a 2022 Ballard Spahr Prize in Poetry finalist. His poetry has appeared in The Nation, Columbia Journal, cream city review, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Disfigured Hours, was published this winter from Lost Kite Editions

Jeremiah Bourgeois (he/him) is a nonfiction and legal writer whose work focuses on sentencing and corrections. He authored The Extraordinary Ordinary Prisoner: Essays From Inside America’s Carceral State. His scholarship has appeared in the American Journal of Criminal Law and the Seattle Journal for Social Justice. Bourgeois served as a law clerk for Washington Court of Appeals Judge George B. Fearing. In December 2025, Bourgeois was appointed Director of the Washington State Office of the Corrections Ombuds by Governor Bob Ferguson.

Dante Clark (he/they) is a poet and performer from the Bronx, NY. Clark explores, through writing poems, the scope and sound of words that inform, delight, and incite toward liberation. He's a recent Goldwater Fellow and MFA Graduate from New York University’s Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House.

Ajanaé is an interdisciplinary poet, conceptual artist, and theologian. As a theologian, she blends criticism, memoir, and theology as autotheory to explore the relationship between Black church history, spirituality, and artistic practice. Her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, and more. Her chapbook, BLOOD-FLEX, won the New Delta Review’s prize. Ajanaé was a co-host of the VS Podcast. She is the Founder and Spiritual Architect of OILY.

Emile Suotonye DeWeaver (he/him) is a formerly incarcerated activist, journalist, and author of Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine. He's from Oakland, CA, and he has proud roots in Rivers State, Nigeria. He works in Oakland as a writing coach and as a facilitator invested in men's healing.

Michael Fischer (he/him) is a nonfiction writer, Moth Mainstage storyteller, and senior manager at Jobs for the Future’s Center for Justice & Economic Advancement, where he helps build robust education and employment pathways for currently and formerly incarcerated people. His writing appears in the New York Times, The Sun, Guernica, Orion, Lit Hub, Longreads, Salon, The Rumpus, Brevity, and elsewhere.

Elizabeth Hawes (she/her) writes prose, plays, and poetry. The recipient of a 2023 Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize with the Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism and multiple PEN America Writing Awards, her recent work can be found in Defector, Lux, Prism, black lipstick, The Rumpus,​ Santa Clara Review​, Zócalo Public Square, and The Sun.

Faylita Hicks (she/they) is an Afro-Latinx writer, interdisciplinary artist, ritual practitioner, and cultural strategist working through an interdimensional, multimodal practice. Their solo exhibition Digital Archives of the Unseen: Poetry and Portraits from the Age of Censorship and Detention (2026) centers digital witnessing and carceral memory. Hicks is the author of A Map of My Want (Haymarket, 2024), winner of the 2025 Midwest Book Award and 2025 CWA Book of the Year, and HoodWitch (Acre, 2019), a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Their memoir A Body of Wild Light (Haymarket, 2027) extends this inquiry.

Nicole Shawan Junior (they/she) is a creative nonfiction and speculative fiction literary artist. A Tin House “Debut Author Over 40” residency recipient, Hedgebrook writer-in-residence, Lambda Literary Emerging Queer Voice, New York Foundation for the Arts Geri Ashur Fellow, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference contributing writer, Junior has received myriad writing residencies and fellowships. Junior is working on two novels and a memoir.

Monterica Sadé Neil (she/her) was raised in Memphis, Tennessee, and received her MFA from Louisiana State University. She has been a Tin House Scholar and a Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University, among other honors. Neil’s writing has appeared in the Offing, the nonprofit news organization MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a memoir.

Geneva Phillips (she/her) is a writer of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Raised and incarcerated in Oklahoma, she is the author of the memoir Disappearing in Glimpses (Mongrel Empire Press, 2020). Her writing has been honored and included in four published PEN America Prison Writing Awards anthologies. She looks forward to unpacking her future upon release in late 2026.

Julie Poole (she/her) is a writer based in Austin, Texas. She has published two books of poetry, Bright Specimen and Gorgeous Freak. Her essays and journalism can be found in the Texas Observer, Texas Monthly, Bon Appétit, HuffPost, the Baffler, Slate, and the Nation. Poole is currently working on a memoir about the intersection of poverty and mental illness.

Carla J. Simmons (she/her) is a creative nonfiction writer who has been incarcerated in the American South since 2004. She critically examines the roles of imperialism, capitalism, racism, poverty, and class in the carceral system. Her work has been featured in Lux, Prism, The Appeal, and Truthout, and nominated for the Stillwater Award. Simmons is currently completing a memoir. 

Deesha Philyaw is the author of the award-winning short story collection The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. Philyaw is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, a Baldwin for the Arts Fellow, a United States Artists Fellow, and co-host of two podcasts, Ursa Short Fiction with Dawnie Walton and Reckon True Stories with Kiese Laymon. She is currently at work developing TV shows based on her short fiction. Deesha’s debut novel, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, is forthcoming.

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This event is organized by Haymarket Books. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and programming work.