Current Fellows (2018-19)

2018 WROB Fellow Gabriella Gage is a nonfiction writer and journalist. Her work has appeared in The Globe and MailThe Boston Globe, MuckRockElle Decor Italia, and Scout Magazines, of which she is the former editor-in-chief. Gabriella holds history degrees from Harvard University and McGill University, and has contributed research to historical novels, academic texts, and multiple MIT publications. She was born and raised in Somerville, Massachusetts.

 

2018 WROB Fellow Julian K. Jarboe is a short story writer, essayist, and sound designer living in Salem, Massachusetts. Their recent fiction has been published in Strange Horizons, SmokeLong Quarterly, Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction, and forthcoming in The Fairy Tale Review. Their critical work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Toast, and forthcoming in Entropy Magazine. They produce and co-host the podcast “Mothers and Others” with Carrow Narby, and are in the pre-production stages on an audio drama. They can be found at toomanyfeelings.com and on Twitter at @JulianKJarboe.

 

2018 WROB Gish Jen Fellow Tatiana M.R. Johnson is an MFA candidate in poetry at Emerson College. She is an assistant editor of poetry for the literary journal Redivider, and a 2017 Pushcart Prize XLI nominee. Her writing explores identity, trauma, especially inherited trauma and what it means to heal. She feels especially good when someone tells her that they felt something by reading her work. Her first collection of poems “for the love of black girls” was released in July 2017. She has been published in Fog Machine, Hypertrophic Press, Maps for Teeth Magazine, Madcap Review and Broad! Magazine and has performed at the Boston Poetry Slam and the Bowery Poetry Club.

 

2018 WROB Ivan Gold Fellow Phoebe Sinclair writes lyrical contemporary fiction featuring young people of color. Her current works-in-progress include: a middle grade novel, a ‘new adult’ urban fantasy novel, a full-length YA graphic novel, and a graphic ‘novella’ for young readers. Past projects have included lyrics for a progressive rock music project, the book for theatrical workshop of Alice in Wonderland, a monologue performed at a dance concert, and mini-zines. Sinclair holds a BFA in Writing, Literature and Publishing from Emerson College. In 2006, she won the PEN New England Children’s Book Caucus Susan P. Bloom Discovery Award for a YA novel manuscript. Through her work with two Cambridge-based non-profits, she writes and produces The Whistler, a community news source in continuous publication since 1970, and supports organizations, faith groups, communities, and individuals in building skills to communicate across difference. Sinclair  blogs at: wholeheartlocal.com

 

2018 WROB Finalist K Chess lives in Jamaica Plain. She was a W.K. Rose Fellow, and her short stories have been honored by the 2017 Pushcart Prize anthology (Special Mention), Midwestern Gothic‘s 2015 Lake Prize (Winner) and the 2015 Nelson Algren Award (Runner Up). Her work has appeared in The Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Journal, PANK, Cutbank Online, Opossum Lit and others. K earned an MFA from Southern Illinois University and currently teaches at GrubStreet. Famous Men Who Never Lived, her first novel, will be published by Tin House Books. You can find her online at kchesswriter.com and on twitter @kchessok.

 

2018 WROB Finalist Kristin Waites’ current work-in-progress is a young adult novel, but she also occasionally writes short stories and personal essays. When not writing, Kristin enjoys exploring new brunch spots and doing yoga. Kristin lives in Boston, but is a native of Texas, where she grew up and got her degree in Professional Writing from Baylor University. She can be found on Twitter at @kristinwaites.

 

 

The Writers’ Room of Boston Emerging Writers’ Fellowship Program is supported in part by a grant from the Boston Cultural Council, a local agency funded by the MA Cultural Council, administrated by the Mayor’s Office of Arts, Tourism & Special Events.