Fresh Voices of 2022

Olga Dies Dreaming
Olga is a status-driven wedding planner grappling with her absent mother, her glittering career among New York’s elite, and her Puerto Rican roots in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico’s history, the story examines political corruption, familial strife, and the very notion of the American dream—all while asking what it really means to weather a storm. Performed by Almarie Guerra, Inés del Castillo, and Armando Riesco.

Xochitl Gonzalez has an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow and recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship in Fiction. Before beginning her MFA, Gonzalez was an entrepreneur and strategic consultant for nearly 15 years. She serves on the Board of the Lower East Side Girls Club of New York. A native Brooklynite and proud public school graduate, she received her BA in art history and visual art from Brown University. She lives in Brooklyn with her dog, Hectah Lavoe.

Black Cake
A story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch. Performed by Lynnette R. Freeman and Simone McIntyre.

Charmaine Wilkerson is an American writer who has lived in Jamaica and is now based in Italy. A graduate of Barnard College and Stanford University, she is a former journalist whose award-winning short stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies.

The Taste of Ginger
A family tragedy beckons Preeti Desai, a first-generation immigrant, to the city of her birth, where she grapples with her family’s past in search of where she truly belongs. Surrounded by the sights and sounds of her heritage, Preeti catches a startling glimpse of her family’s battles with class, tradition, and sacrifice. Torn between two beautifully flawed cultures, Preeti must now untangle what home truly means to her. Performed by Soneela Nankani.

Mansi Shah was born in Toronto, was raised in the US Midwest, studied at universities in America, Australia, and England, and now lives in Los Angeles. When she's not writing, she's traveling and exploring different cultures near and far, experimenting on a new culinary creation, or trying to improve her tennis game.

The Maid
A Clue-like locked-room mystery and a heartwarming journey of the spirit, The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different—and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart. Performed by Lauren Ambrose.

Nita Prose is a longtime editor, serving many best-selling authors and their books. She lives in Toronto in a house that is only moderately clean.

The Boy with a Bird in His Chest
A heartbreaking yet hopeful coming-of-age novel about the things that make us unique and lovable, The Boy with a Bird in His Chest grapples with the fear, depression, and feelings of isolation that come with believing that we will never be loved, let alone accepted, for who we truly are, and learning to live fully and openly regardless. Performed by Nicky Endres.

Emme Lund lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. She has an MFA from Mills College. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Time, The Rumpus, Paper Darts, and other publications. In 2019, she was awarded an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship in Fiction.

Wahala
Wahala, which is Nigerian for "trouble," follows Ronke, Boo, and Simi—three Anglo-Nigerian best friends who are navigating the personal and professional chaos of their mid-30s. It's when a charismatic woman named Isobel infiltrates the group that their decades-long bond starts cracking. Performed by Natalie Simpson.

Nikki May was born in Bristol, England, and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. She ran a successful ad agency before turning to writing. Wahala was inspired by a long (and loud) lunch with friends. It is being turned into major BBC TV drama. She lives in Dorset, England, with her husband, two standard schnauzers, and way too many books.

You Truly Assumed
After a terrorist attack rocks the country and anti-Islamic sentiment stirs, three Black Muslim girls create a space where they can shatter assumptions and share truths. Sabriya turns to her online journal for comfort. Her blog, "You Truly Assumed," was never meant to be anything more than an outlet, but it goes viral as Muslim teens around the country flock to it and find solace and a sense of community.

Laila Sabreen is a young adult contemporary writer who was raised in the Washington, DC, area. She currently attends Emory University, where she is double majoring in sociology and English. When she isn’t writing, she can be found working on essays, creating playlists that are way too long, and watching This Is Us.

The Violin Conspiracy
Ray McMillian loves playing the violin more than anything, and nothing will stop him from pursuing his dream of becoming a professional musician—especially after he discovers that his great-grandfather's fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius. It must be meant-to-be. Then, with the international Tchaikovsky Competition—the Olympics of classical music—fast approaching, his prized family heirloom is stolen. Ray is determined to get it back. Performed by JD Jackson and Brendan Slocumb.

Brendan Slocumb was raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and holds a degree in music education (with concentrations in violin and viola) from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. For more than 20 years he has been a public and private school music educator and has performed with orchestras throughout Northern Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC. He is working on his second novel.

The School for Good Mothers
A lapse in judgment lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance. It’s a searing pause-resister that is also a transgressive novel of ideas about the perils of “perfect” upper-middle class parenting; the violence enacted upon women by both the state and, at times, one another; the systems that separate families; and the boundlessness of love. Performed by Catherine Ho.

Jessamine Chan’s short stories have appeared in Tin House and Epoch. A former reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, she holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Brown University. Her work has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Wurlitzer Foundation, Jentel, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Anderson Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Ragdale. She lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter.

Velorio
Velorio—meaning “wake”—is a story of strength, resilience, and hope. Set in the wake of Hurricane Maria, the novel follows a remarkable group of survivors searching for hope on an island torn apart by both natural disaster and human violence. Performed by Diana Pou, Vico Ortiz, María Victoria Martínez, Gil René Rodríguez, Jesús E. Martínez, Gabriel S. Rivera Vázquez, Yetta Gottesman.

Xavier Navarro Aquino was born and raised in Puerto Rico. His works have appeared in Tin House, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Guernica, The Caribbean Writer, and elsewhere. He received a scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Tennessee Williams scholarship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference, a MacDowell Fellowship, and an American Council of Learned Societies Emerging Voices Fellowship at Dartmouth College. He has an MA in English from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Currently, Navarro Aquino is an assistant professor of English at Notre Dame. 

What the Fireflies Knew
In the vein of Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones and Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, this coming-of-age novel is told from the perspective of 11-year-old KB as she and her sister try, over the course of a summer, to make sense of their new life with their estranged grandfather after the death of their father and disappearance of their mother. Performed by Zenzi Williams.

Kai Harris is a writer and educator from Detroit who uses her voice to uplift the Black community through realistic fiction centered on the Black experience. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Kweli Journal, Longform, and the Killens Review, among others. A graduate of Western Michigan University’s PhD program, Harris now lives in the Bay Area with her husband, three daughters, and dog Tabasco, and is an assistant professor of creative writing at Santa Clara University.