Join us in celebrating the commendable community success stories this May! Grubbies were published in literary journals across the country, won awards and prizes, secured book deals, and so much more. Our community is closing May 2025 with twenty-five publications, four awards and prizes, two book deals, and six book publications! Let us celebrate you: submit your good news to GrubStreet’s Department of Congratulations.

BWOC Member Lisa Stringfellow’s novel Kingdom of Dust (Quill Tree Books) was longlisted for the 2025 Mass Book Awards for Middle Grade/Young Adult. 2020-21 Emerging Writer Fellow Julian Iralu has received an Emerging Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club Foundation. Writing under Lori Gold, instructor Lori Goldstein's sixth novel and book club fiction debut, Romantic Friction, was released on May 6th. Lori was featured on NPR's Here and Now and The Hub NBC 10. Memoir Incubator graduate Virginia Deluca’s book If You Must Go, I Wish You Triplets was released May 1st. She is so thankful for Alysia Abbott and all her incubator classmates for their support.

2022-23 Emerging Writer Fellow Anasazi Chavez's fiction piece "Love In Abalone" was published in Bodega Magazine. She would like to extend her thanks to GrubStreet instructor Yu-Mei Balasingamchow for her mentorship in writing this piece during her "6 Weeks, 6 Stories" class. Elizabeth Davis’s 100-word submission “Crickets” has been selected for inclusion in a special edition of the Tadpole Press Literary Magazine. Anne Labouisse Dean’s historical novel Far Side of Revenge: Brian Boru, Future King of Ireland will be published by GladEye Press, launching June 3, 2025. She thanks Olivia Kate Cerrone and Cameron Terwilliger.

Memoir Incubator graduate Karen Kirsten’s essay about the 80th anniversary of liberating Europe and how to rekindle the values that made America great was published in Cognoscenti. Beverly Cooper Pierce is thrilled about the publication of her debut novel, The Rowans, a magical-realist historical novel inspired by her father’s Cape Ann family. She honors especially her fifth and sixth great-grandmothers who, in 1752, started a woman-owned business in a harbor town. Bev is grateful to Cam Terwilliger, Marjan Kamali, Nora Corrigan, Alison Murphy, and Tim Horvath. Next Avenue published "An Unlikely Homecoming," a companion piece to Julie Brill's new book Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia.

Essay Incubator instructor Ethan Gilsdorf’s essay "My Mom, Julia Child and Me" was published in WBUR/NPR's Cognoscenti. Instructor Rhonda DeChambeau’s debut novel, a young adult novel-in-verse titled Top Heavy, published by Holiday House, will launch on June 10. Pete Prokesch's flash-fiction UFO story "An Encounter with Gahd" was published in Moria.

Instructor Christine Meade was awarded Boston Business Women's Best Editor for 2025. Manuscript consultant and instructor Cheryl Lawton Malone has teamed up with best-selling children's author, Victoria J. Coe to write two "self-guided courses" for kidlit and YA writers, Writing KidLit 101: A Self-Guided Course and Writing KidLit 102: Your First Draft.

Memoir Incubator graduate Polly M. Ingraham’s book Unconverted: Memoir of a Marriage published by Rootstock Publishing will launch on June 17th. She would like to thank the Memoir Incubator class of 2017-18 taught by Garrard Conley. Also, a big thanks to Ethan Gilsdorf who worked with her on revising a big hunk of the manuscript. Instructor Tim Weed's novel The Afterlife Project received a starred review from Library Journal. To celebrate the release of this novel Tim will be at GrubStreet/Porter Square Books: Boston Edition in conversation with Charles Coe on June 5th and at Belmont Books in conversation with Julie Dalton on July 10th. Memoir Generator student Talia Vestri published her first-ever personal essays in WBUR Cognoscenti and on Brevity Blog. She thanks her instructors Katie Bannon, Nancy Agabian, and Michelle Seaton along with fellow memoir writers for helping hone her craft.

Novel and Essay Incubator graduate Karen Wilfrid’s essay “Come See Me Before You Go,” about losing a student to suicide, was published in Electric Literature. She would like to thank her GrubStreet writing group and Nihal Mubarak’s “Writing Through Grief” course. Memoir Incubator graduate Patricia Harney is excited to share that she's signed with Columbia University Press for the publication of her hybrid narrative nonfiction-memoir Grief in the Margins: Traumatic Loss after Murder. Portions of the book were developed in memoir classes with Dorian Fox, Michelle Seaton, Rani Neutill, and Alysia Abbott. She would like to thank these instructors, her classmates, and her writing group. Giulietta Nardone's drabble "100 Years of Water" was published in Black Hare Press.

Instructor Anna Hogeland’s second novel Wild Aster was bought by Bloomsbury at auction and will be published in the fall of 2026. Jen Hallaman's poems "& no, I won't go back" and "A Cardinal Flies Low to the Ground" were published in Volume 74 of Towson University's literary magazine. The poem "& no, I won't go back" was first drafted and workshopped during Laneisha Brown's Advanced Poetry Workshop in the spring of 2023. Imogen Arate, recipient of a Boston Writers of Color Literary Support stipend and the Executive Director of Poets and Muses, published her poem "Trade-offs" in The New Verse News.

BWOC member James "Jim" Washington's poem "I Come from a Time" was published in Obsidian issue 50.1. Marcia Yudkin's two flash essays, "Over the Line" and "Now You See It," were published by Flash Boulevard. Ellen Davis Sullivan is pleased to report that her short story “My Deal” was published online in J Journal: New Writing on Justice, the literary magazine of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "Pajama Party for Two," an essay by instructor Lisa Braxton, is featured in the anthology Grief Like Yours: A Story Collection of Life After Loss. NmaHassan Muhammad has been named a finalist for the 2025 A Public Space Fellowship, selected from a pool of 800 applicants.