GrubWrites

Introducing the 2021-2022 Emerging Writer Fellows

We’re thrilled to introduce the 2021-2022 Emerging Writer Fellows: Andy Lopez, Tochukwu Okafor, and J.C. Rodriguez. Every year, GrubStreet awards the Emerging Writer Fellowship to three talented writers who demonstrate a passion and commitment to their writing. Over the course of the fellowship year, each writer will have tuition-free access to GrubStreet’s classes and Muse & the Marketplace conferences. We could not be more excited to congratulate and welcome Andy, Tochukwu, and J.C.!

Andy Lopez is a writer and communications director for a non-profit in the Philippines. Her work has been published in Longleaf Review, CHEAP POP, Non.Plus Lit, and other magazines and anthologies. Find her on Twitter at @andylopezwrites.

Tochukwu Okafor is a Nigerian writer whose work has appeared in the 2018 Best of the Net, the 2019 Best Small Fictions, The Guardian, Harvard’s Transition Magazine, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. He is a 2022 Good Hart Artist-in-Residence, a 2021 Wellstone Center in the Redwoods (WCR) Writing Fellow, a 2021 Jack Straw Writing Fellow, a 2021 Frank Conley Memorial Scholar, a 2021 Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholar for Young Writers, a 2021 Longleaf Writers Conference BIPOC Scholar, and an alumnus of the 2021 Tin House Workshop. He is also a 2018 Rhodes Scholar finalist, a 2018 Kathy Fish Fellow, and winner of the 2017 Short Story Day Africa Prize for Short Fiction. He has been shortlisted for the 2017 Awele Creative Trust Award, the 2016 Problem House Press Short Story Prize, the 2016 Southern Pacific Review Short Story Prize, and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He was a member of the 2016 Short Story Day Africa Writing Workshop and the 2015 Association of Nigerian Authors Creative Writing Workshop. He holds a master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University and has received scholarships and fellowship grants from the Worcester Arts Council, Kundiman, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Etisalat (now 9mobile), the MTN Foundation, Fishtrap, Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference, and Exxon Mobil. He lives in Worcester, USA, and is at work on a novel and a story collection. He is on Twitter @toch_okafor and Instagram @tochukwu_okafor.

J.C. Rodriguez is a writer and educator from Westbury, NY. His poems have appeared in Taco Bell Quaterly, Meow Meow Pow Pow, and FreezeRay, among others. He is a slush adventurer for Interstellar Flight Press and a recipient of a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship. Outside of writing, he is an MSW student and cheeseburger enthusiast.