Announcing the 2023-2024 Craft Year Cohort

Dispatches from Craft Year

I’m truly thrilled to announce the 2023-2024 Craft Year Cohort today. I had nearly 250 applications for 10 spots in this free, year-long intensive writing workshop, and the quality of the applications was tremendous. This was a very difficult decision; I had to turn away a number of very promising, dedicated, and talented people, which I think is often the case. I truly wish I had the time and capacity take on more of these wonderful writers.

This week, I’d like to share a little bit more about the individuals in this incredible cross-genre group, who you can read more about below. In the coming weeks, I’ll send more regular dispatches from our workshops and seminars themselves: things we’re digging into, struggling with, and learning about, so that you’ll be able to follow along with our syllabus a bit at home, even if you aren’t attending in person.

Stay tuned for more from Craft Year and from Craftwork - you can read more about this newsletter’s larger mission here. In the meantime, get to know a little more about the writers I’m honored to be working with this year.

G.L. Exume

G.L Exume is a Haitian-American writer based in the Northeastern U.S. Her work has been previously published in Decoded Pride. She can be found on Twitter @smalljoys2.

Zenas Ubere

Zenas Ubere is a Nigerian writer. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he has works in The Forge Lit, Agbowó, Gordon Square Review, The Voyage Journal, Isele Magazine, and elsewhere. He is the coordinator of Lolwe Classes and a participant in the SBMEN-Goethe Institut Arts Writing and Criticism Workshop.

Raia Small

Raia Small (she/her) was born and raised in San Francisco by a painter from Delhi and a cab driver from Burlingame. She writes essays and journalism grounded in memoir, history, disability studies, critical theory, anticapitalist struggle, and a rigorous practice of reading the world as well as texts. Her work has recently been published in Midnight Sun, Peste, Kaleidoscoped, and Make/shift. She loves coffee breaks, open spaces, and being a cat parent.

Hayward Leach

Hayward Leach is a Brooklyn-born actor and writer. He has had non-fiction published by Narratively and attended workshops at Tin House (Summer and Winter 2022), Kimbilio, and Community of Writers. As an actor, he can be seen in Tom Swift (The CW), Sneakerella (Disney +), and Love Life (HBOMax).

Karen Mok

Karen Mok is a speculative fiction writer and screenwriter. She is a 2023 Periplus Fellow, and her work has received support from American Short Fiction, Sewanee Writers' Workshop, and The Massachusetts Review. Born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, she identifies as a child of immigrants. She is currently based in Brooklyn.

Noah Grey Rosenzweig

Noah Grey Rosenzweig (he/they) grew up in New Jersey (home of the best bagels) before moving to D.C. with his beloved sidekick, Pilot Jones. He is the nonfiction winner of Columbia Journal’s 2022 Print Contest. They are the current editorial fellow for Roxane Gay Books and a literary agent with Triangle House.

Hana Choi

Hana Choi is a bilingual writer, translator, and attorney. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Epoch, Mississippi Review, and CRAFT, and has been named a finalist for the 2022 Missouri Review Editors’ Prize and the 2023 Mississippi Review Prize. She is a recipient of the 2022 Grants for Artists’ Progress from Artist Trust and a 2023 fellow of the Jack Straw Writers Program. A native of Seoul, South Korea, she now lives in Seattle, where she is at work on her first novel and collection of short stories.

Kingsley-Wynn Ukuku

Kingsley-Wynn Ukuku is a Gullah-Igbo creator from South Carolina. A digital editor, she creates screenplays, short films, e-books, and bedroom pop for boutique publishing collectives. Her works primarily focus on intimacy, gender and race politics, and coming of age. She's represented by Dollface Media.

Deepa Paul

Born to Filipino and Indian parents in Manila, the Philippines, Deepa Paul is a freelance writer residing in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Alongside her work as a copywriter for brands like Netflix, HBO and NBC Universal, Deepa is currently seeking representation for her memoir Ask Me How It Works: Frequently Asked Questions About My Open Marriage. She has read her work at Schmutz Cinema, Body Electric Presents, and the Felix Meritis Institute in Amsterdam. She was a sex and intimacy panelist at Come Alive and a speaker at both De Meerminners and Creative Mornings. Among other places, she has been published in Seventeen Magazine Philippines,The Philippine Star, Singapore Women’s Weekly, Cheex, Gal-Dem, and the Sky Island Journal. She also has a Substack newsletter: Letters by Deepa.

Ann Kathryn Kelly

Ann Kathryn Kelly writes from New Hampshire’s Seacoast region. She’s an editor with Barren Magazine, a columnist with WOW! Women on Writing, and she works in the technology sector. Ann leads writing workshops for a nonprofit that offers therapeutic arts programming to people living with brain injury. Her writing has appeared in a number of literary journals, and in summer 2023, Ann will join other writers and poets in Prague for a month-long immersive writing residency.