We are honored and excited to announce this year’s Emerging Writer Award recipients. Each year we present three prizes that recognize emerging writers who possess exceptional talent and demonstrate potential for lasting literary careers. A jury of past winners, KWLS board members and staff, and trusted readers reviewed hundreds of entries over the course of multiple rounds.
The Cecelia Joyce Johnson Award for a short story goes to Brett Hymel Jr.; the Scotti Merrill Award for poetry goes to Chelsea Christine Hill; and the Marianne Russo Award for a novel-in-progress goes to Lu Han.
This January the winners will join us for the 2027 Seminar: Poetry and our Writers’ Workshop Program.
Thank you to everyone who applied—we encourage you to keep writing and submitting—and to all our readers for offering such insightful feedback.
CECELIA JOYCE JOHNSON AWARD
for a short story
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SCOTTI MERRILL AWARD
for poetry
Chelsea Christine Hill is a poet from Houston, Texas. Her recent poems have appeared in New England Review, Poetry Northwest, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA degree from the University of Illinois and is a current doctoral student in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
The final judge, Billy Collins, wrote: “The subject here is growing up Texan with Jesus, whether you believe in him or not. The voice in charge is smart (smart alecky, too) and very lively as Dante and the Bible mix with Marlboro Reds and “flag girls.” This poet knows that poetry comes in lines, and she puts that knowledge to great effect.”
MARIANNE RUSSO AWARD
for a novel-in-progress
Lu Han is a Chinese-born writer whose work can be found in The Adroit Journal, The Margins, Lost Balloon, and elsewhere. She was a McCormack Writing Center 2023 Fiction Scholar, a 2024 Veasna So Scholar in Fiction, and a 2026 Kweli Emerging Writer Fellow. Her work has been supported by Community of Writers, One Story Writers’ Conference, and Guernica and was shortlisted for the 2025 Jesmyn Ward Prize in Fiction. She is at work on a novel and a short story collection.
Silas House was the final judge. He commented: “The author finds the perfect balance of propulsion and lyricism to tell a story that grabs the reader by the neck from the first sentence and keeps a strong hold. The pages flew by, yet each sentence was structured with great care. It took me to a time and place vividly, introduced me to history I was not familiar enough with, and made me want to learn more.”
Winners of the Emerging Writer Awards receive full tuition to the Seminar and Writers’ Workshop Program, round-trip airfare, full lodging support, a $500 honorarium, and the opportunity to appear on stage during the Seminar. We will begin accepting submissions for EWA 2028 in March 2027.
