New Fellows & Scholars

The Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance is pleased to announce the recipients of several annual fellowships and scholarships. These fellowships and scholarships support writers at different stages of their careers and living in different parts of Maine.

For the fifth year in a row, MWPA has selected five or more Ashley Bryan Fellows in honor of the life and work of Ashley Bryan and to support emerging writers. Bryan was the author of more than fifty books and recipient of many awards including MWPA’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 2017. Bryan Fellows receive a five-year membership to MWPA with some free workshops each year as well as other forms of support; fellowships are awarded to emerging Maine writers who face significant barriers to traditionally exclusive, professional literary spaces. MWPA’s Samara Cole Doyon led the selection process with two current fellows.

The 2025 Bryan Fellows include (below, clockwise from left to right): Joana Chacón de Entwisle, Sophia Kapita, Angel McCorkle, Frederick Ndabaramiye, Sabrine Nibamwe, Annelise Parham, Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz, and Omar Yusuf. A full bio for each Ashley Bryan Fellow appears below.

Thanks to an ongoing partnership with the Maine Community Foundation, the MWPA awarded this fall’s Martin Dibner Memorial Fellowship to Judy Williams to attend a long-term workshop. Judy is a retired Writing Center Director and Instructor of English. Her writing interests are varied: short fiction, novels, poetry and memoir. She is currently at work on a memoir about the intergenerational nature of sexual abuse trauma. She lives and writes in Belfast.

Thanks to a partnership with Monson Arts, three past Monson Fellows recently selected (below, left to right) writer, editor, and farmer Holli Cederholm, poet and teacher Jude Marx, and also Judy Williams to receive residencies at Monson Arts in 2025. A full bio for each writer appears below.

Thanks to the ongoing support of NYT-bestselling writer Christina Baker Kline, MWPA recently selected Annelise Parham (above, at right) as this year’s Christina Baker Kline Scholar. Parham will receive free workshops at MWPA, as well as a chance to consult with Baker Kline. And finally, thanks to a fund set up back in 2016 to honor the untimely passing of Elizabeth Ilgenfritz, a longtime member of the organization, writer Parham also received an Ilgrenfritz Scholarship, a $1000 award to attend a writing conference in 2025.

The MWPA congratulates all of these writers on their fellowships and scholarships, as well as all of those who applied this year. Each of these opportunities will open again for submissions in the early fall of 2025. For more information on any of these opportunities, visit mainewriters.org.

2025 Ashley Bryan Fellows

Joana Elizabeth Chacón de Entwisle is a Pipil Salvadoran-American teacher and community organizer. She grew up in Seattle, became a high school English teacher, and co-founded the nonprofit Educators for Antiracism. She has moved to Maine, where she devotes her time to raising her children and organizing within the local Hispanic community, including DJ-ing for WERU, co-moderating the largest social media group for Latinos in Maine, and helping lead a Spanish immersion story hour at her local library. Joana is an aspiring bilingual children’s book writer.

Sophia Kapita is a writer and political science student based in Portland. A Michael Macklin Fellow, Telling Room alum, and a Maine NEW Leadership alum, her work explores identity, displacement, and the challenges resilience of Black womanhood. She is currently pursuing her Associate’s degree at Southern Maine Community College and developing a collection of poems about migration and belonging.

Angel McCorkle is a Black, queer, non-binary poet and fiction writer currently based in Maine. Angel is a student at St. Joseph's College studying religious studies in preparation for chaplaincy work. They bring an intersectional lens to their writing, exploring themes of bodily autonomy, chronic illness, marginalization, and the search for belonging.

Frederick Ndabaramiye is a Rwandan artist, speaker, and author. As a result of post-genocide violence, Frederick lost his hands in an unprovoked machete attack, but he survived. Now an accomplished artist, he has shared his artwork around the world and helped open the Ubumwe Community Center, in the town of Gisenyi, Rwanda. In 2014, Frederick wrote a book titled Frederick: A Story of Boundless Hope, in which he shares his story and the roles that faith, hope, forgiveness and art have played in his life and healing.

Sabrine Nibamwe is a poet, writer, and published author of two poetry collections: her debut collection, I will tell my son, and slay, your highness, which reached #1 in all three of its Amazon categories. She was born and raised in Rwanda and currently lives and writes in Maine.

Annelise Parham is a daughter, sister, spouse, mother, and writer of African-American, German, and Irish descent. She writes as she lives, at the intersection of race, class, and culture. Annelise holds a bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology from NYU and a master’s degree in business from MIT Sloan. She shifted to full-time writing in 2023 after leaving a decade-long career in corporate biotech. After a lifetime spent searching for a place that feels like home, Annelise has happily settled in the Midcoast with her husband, two kids, and the family Collie.

Born in Monterey, Mexico, Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz grew up in Colorado and completed her undergraduate and graduate studies in California, Massachusetts, and Texas. Clarisa moved to Maine in 2009 to work at Bates College, where she teaches Latin American politics, Latino politics, and international migration and is also founding member of the College's Latin American and Latinx Studies Program.She's been a writer since she was a kid, but it's only in the past five years that she's convinced herself that some stories about politics and immigration are best told through fiction.

Omar Yusuf, a first generation Somali immigrant and current resident of Westbrook, is a long time poet and writer, drawing inspiration from the natural beauty of Maine to tell stories of generational and religious trauma through intersectional poems that breathe new life into what it means to heal and move forward. Omar has been published through The Telling Room’s Young Writers and Leaders and Publishing Workshop programs. He is currently pursuing a BA in English and volunteers with the Presumpscot Regional Land Trust and is an avid hiker of Maine’s trails.

MWPA's Monson Fellows

Holli Cederholm is a writer, editor, and farmer based in rural Maine and also was awarded a Dibner Fellowship earlier this year.

Jude Marx (they/them) was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico and now resides in southern Maine. They have written poetry since they were seven years old, later competing nationally on Albuquerque’s city-wide youth slam poetry team. Jude teaches at The Telling Room, a nonprofit that teaches and publishes creative writing by young people across Maine. Jude is the winner of the 2024 Maine Trans Poetry Anthology Contest and a 2025 Maine Literary Award for poetry. Their poems appear or are forthcoming in New Words Press, Monster Beauties: A Maine Transgender Poetry Anthology, The Stonecoast Review, and Neon & Smoke. 

Judy Williams is a retired Writing Center Director and college English instructor. At various points in life, she has been a writer of fiction, poetry and memoir. She lives, writes and resists injustice in Belfast.