Contest and Scholarship Winners
The 2025 DISQUIET Literary Prize Winners
DISQUIET International is thrilled to announce the winners in each genre, including one grand prize winner, for our 2025 Literary Prize, in partnership with Granta, Ninth Letter, and The Common. Thanks so much to all who entered!
Poetry and Grand Prize Winner: “Every Other Weekend” by Carson Wolfe
(will be published in The Common)
Carson Wolfe is a Mancunian poet and winner of New Writing North’s Debut Poetry Prize (2023). Their work has appeared with Rattle, The Rumpus, The North, The Common, Best New Poets, and is forthcoming with POETRY. They were longlisted in The Poetry Society’s National Competition (2023), and have received awards from The Aurora Poetry Prize, and The Edward Thomas Fellowship.
FINALISTS IN POETRY:
Ellie Black, “The Confessional” and “Revelator”
Aiden Heung, “The Theory of Evolution”
Ariana Matondo, “milele mtanzania”
Fiction Winner: “Just Girls” by Sarah Perrin
(will be published in Granta.com)
Sarah Perrin is an MFA candidate in creative writing at New York University. She is also the fiction editor of Washington Square Review. Previously, she was an assistant editor at Alfred A. Knopf. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Passages North, Pithead Chapel, and Flash Frog. A graduate of Duke University, she has been supported by Community of Writers, from which she received The Ruth Nyswander Del Duca Memorial Scholarship. She lives in New York City.
FINALISTS IN FICTION:
Ge Fang, “Second Born”
Jake Lancaster, “Four-Part Magnum Opus”
Nonfiction Winner: “Caribbean Gothic“ by Tylea Richard
(will be published in NinthLetter.com)
Tylea Richard is a writer and technologist who is inspired by in-between identities and uneasy juxtapositions. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute for American Indian Arts and lives in Miami with her dog Nosferatu.
FINALISTS IN NONFICTION:
Asha Dore, “Gravity”
Edward Gauvin, “Hauntologies”
Luso-American Fellowship Winners
With special thanks to our partner Fundação Luso-Americana, Disquiet is proud to offer these fellowships to writers of Lusophone descent. All winners will receive free accommodation, travel stipend, and tuition for the 2025 Disquiet program in Lisbon.
Winner: Arnaldo Batista
Arnaldo Batista is a queer poet from Miami, FL, where he received his MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University. His work can be found in Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast Journal, PANK, and has been nominated for 2024’s Puschart Prize and Best New Poets.
Winner: Kelly Dalke
Kelly Dalke is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire MFA program where she was a teaching fellow and awarded the Young Dawkins III Prize in creative writing. Her work can be found in publications such as The Adroit Journal, Litro, and others. Her writing tends to focus on 2nd and 3rd generation Americans, the idea of roots and identity, and the experiences of women from girlhood through motherhood. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and daughter where she teaches in an online honors high school program.
Winner: Flávia Monteiro
Flávia Monteiro is a Brazilian writer based in Miami, FL. She’s a 2025 Periplus Fellow. Her work in English has been or will be published in Shenandoah, HAD, Honey Literary, and elsewhere. In Portuguese, she and two other writers put out a monthly zine called BUM, where she places short absurdist crônicas and the eventual dinosaur picture. You can sometimes find her instagramming @flavia_monteiro.
Winner: Jacq Roderick
Jacq Roderick (they/them/theirs) is a poet from coastal Massachusetts. They are a first year MFA candidate in the Creative Writing Program at New York University studying poetry. They are a recipient of the City of Arts and Culture Boston Emerging Writers Residency and the first place winner of the Charlotte Reese Memorial Prize. They have been published in The Wellesley Review, Pearl Press, The Burner, a forthcoming trans anthology, and elsewhere. Their work is grounded in their working class upbringing and aims to subvert traditional conventions of poetic craft.
Luso-American Fellowship Finalists
Genevieve Abravanel
Karen Baceller
Allison Hedge Coke
paulA neves
Bruna Kalil Othero Fernandes
Laramie Hickman
Christopher Menezes
Mariana Sabino
Camila Santos
Ana Cristina Hsu Silva
Lee Santos Silva
2025 Flowers Fellowship
Thanks to a generous donor, we are pleased to announce the winner and finalists of 2025’s Flowers Fellowship, honoring DISQUIET faculty emeritus Arthur Flowers. The 2025 Flowers Fellow will recieve a full tuition waiver to attend DISQUIET, plus housing, airfare, and a small stipend for daily expenses.
Winner: Stefan Bindley-Taylor
Stefan Bindley-Taylor is a Trinidadian-American author, musician, and educator born and raised in Maryland. His stories balance absurdist humor with real emotion to showcase characters from the Caribbean diaspora through a nuanced, humorous, and humane lens. His work has been published in several outlets including Adda, Brooklyn Rail, and NY Carib News. He is the winner of the 2024 Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Prize, a short-lister for the 2024 Commonwealth Foundation Short Story Prize, and a finalist for the PEN 2023 Emerging Voices Fellowship.
He currently splits his time between New York City and Virginia and is pursuing his M.F.A at the University of Virginia.
Finalists:
Amanda Borquaye
Uduak-Abasi Ekong