Contest and Fellowship Winners
2026 DISQUIET Prize Winners
DISQUIET International is thrilled to announce the winners in each genre, for our 2026 Literary Prize, in partnership with Granta, Ninth Letter, and The Common. Each winner receives publication and a full tuition waiver to attend Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon. One grand prize winner will also receive accommodations and a travel stipend. Thanks so much to all who entered!
Fiction and Grand Prize Winner: “Ana” by Cory Beizer
(will be published in Granta.com)
Cory Beizer is a fiction writer. His debut short story “Smith,” published in The Common, won the 2026 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. He works as a partner at The Environmental Storytelling Studio and lives in Whitefish, Montana, where he likes to go birding and backpacking.
Fiction finalist:
Alison Murphy, “You’ve Been Very Brave”
Nonfiction Winner: “Contemplations of Compatriotism in the Back of an Uber at 2 in the Morning” by Amanda Borquaye
(will be published in NinthLetter.com)
Amanda Borquaye is a Ghanaian-American creative nonfiction writer from the American South. She often writes from the haunted interior of a youngest daughter in an immigrant family where the lyric allows her to wade through inherited shame, guilt, and the fragility of belonging in a decaying empire. Her writing has been supported by the McCormack Writing Center Summer Workshop (formerly Tin House), Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and Lighthouse Advanced Writers Workshop. Her writing appears in The Audacity, Longleaf Review, and Huffington Post. When she’s not writing, she’s digging through her father’s collection of analog music. She is a DC Public Library megafan and is precariously employed in foreign aid and humanitarian response.
Nonfiction finalists:
Katie Bennett, “She Was Wild Grass”
Sarah Chaves, “I liked all the attention I got as the Dead Dad Girl. Until I didn’t.”
Jacky Grey, “Girl | Boy”
Jaric Sarmiento, “What My Mother Meant”
Poetry Winner: “If It Wasn’t for Heroin” by Amiya Moretta
(will be published in The Common)
Amiya Moretta is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a Fulbright Scholar. She lives and writes in Iowa City, Iowa.
Poetry finalists:
Jordan Hamel
Ann De Vilbiss
AD Lauren-Abunussar
Ethan Park
Congratulations and thank you to all!
Luso-American Fellowship Winners
With special thanks to our partner Fundação Luso-Americana, Disquiet is proud to offer these four fellowships to writers of Lusophone descent. All winners will receive accommodations, travel stipend, and tuition for the 2026 Disquiet program in Lisbon.
Winner: M.P. Carver
M.P. Carver is a poet and visual artist from Salem, MA. She is Director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, miCrO-Founder of Molecule: a tiny lit mag, and teaches writing at Salem State University. Her work has been published in journals and anthologies including Rattle, Mantis, and NixesMate, among others She has received funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Essex Community Foundation. In 2023 her poem “In Vitro” was named a finalist in the Connecticut River Review’s Experimental Poetry Contest, and in 2022 her poem “You & God & I” was awarded the New England Poetry Club’s E.E. Cummings Prize. Her chapbook, Selachipmorpha, was published by Incessant Pipe in 2015, and a chapbook with Lily Poetry Review Books, Hard Up, was released in 2025. More at mpcarver.com.
Winner: Will Cordeiro
Will Cordeiro is the author of the poetry collection Trap Street, winner of the Able Muse Book Award (Able Muse, 2021), and the fiction collection Whispering Gallery (DUMBO Press, 2024) as well as coauthor of Experimental Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024) and the forthcoming New Foundations of Creative Writing (Bloomsbury, 2027). Will’s work is published in 32 Poems, AGNI, Pleiades, Quarterly West, and The Threepenny Review. Will received an MFA and Ph.D. from Cornell University, currently serves as president of the Northern Arizona Book Festival, and coedits Eggtooth Editions. Will lives in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Winner: Fernanda Cunha
Fernanda Cunha is a Brazilian-American writer and scholar whose work considers experiences of immigration and undocumentedness, belonging, and queer desire. Currently, she is editing her first fiction manuscript, Mother / Daughter (mother slash daughter), which tells an intergenerational story of displacement, immigration, and lesbian desire. She is also working on a short story collection that retells Brazilian myth and folklore through narratives of queer, undocumented immigration.
Winner: Roseanne Pereira
Roseanne Pereira is the daughter of immigrants from Goa. Her fiction has appeared in Catapult, The Shanghai Literary Review, and is forthcoming in The Rumpus. Roseanne has been a two-time fellow at Writers by Writers’ Tomales Bay workshop, a Tin House Scholar, and a writer-in-residence at Hedgebrook. A graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, Roseanne was awarded the 2023 Levis Prize from Friends of Writers, which provides funds for debut manuscript completion to one fiction writer and one poet each year. For more, visit www.roseannepereira.com.
Luso-American Fellowship Finalists:
Cristina Cabral Corby
Andrew de Silva
Cristofer Gonçalo Duarte
Caleb Jagoda
Aline Mello
James Rego III
Analeah Loschiavo Rosen
Camila Santos
Gabriella Souza
Kate Vieira
2026 Katherine Vaz Fellowship
Funded by a generous donation from a Writing the Luso Experience alum and selected by DISQUIET faculty emerita Katherine Vaz, the new Katherine Vaz Fellowship is an additional opportunity for writers of Lusophone descent. The winner receives accommodation, travel stipend, and tuition to the 2026 Disquiet program in Lisbon.
Winner: Ricky Novaes de Oliveira
Born in Glendale, California, in 1997, Ricky Novaes de Oliveira is a Brazilian-American literary artist, educator, and poet. His work as a high school teacher and university instructor informs his poetics as well as his commitment to literacy education. His poems have been published in Postscript Magazine, Rigorous, and UChicago Arts Magazine, and he is currently finishing a cross-genre novel at UC San Diego as part of the MFA in Writing program. Ricky lives and loves in Southern California.
Introducing the Literary Cleveland Fellowship!
DISQUIET is pleased to present a new award for 2026 created in partnership with Literary Cleveland, granting a full scholarship to DISQUIET for one Northeast Ohio writer.
Our first ever Literary Cleveland winner is Melissa Vincel!
Melissa Vincel is a Northeast Ohio writer who uses poetry as memoir. Her favorite fodder — death, dogs, motherhood, and sex — echoes in her work as she explores what makes us show up with humanity in an increasingly non-human world. After nearly two decades balancing caregiving and a freelance career, she has shifted her energy towards hosting community creativity retreats and writing full time. That shift has paved the way for her to attend DISQUIET as the Literary Cleveland Fellow, and she is deeply grateful.