MCW Alumn Monica Macansantos (MCW 2013) been awarded the Black Mountain Institute 2024-2025 Shearing Fellowship. The fellowship brings writers to the UNLV campus for one year to “join a community of creative writers and scholars in a thriving literary scene in Las Vegas and on the campus of UNLV.” More on the fellowship and this year’s recipients can be found here.

Monica Macansantos holds an MFA from the Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD from the International Institute of Modern Letters at the Victoria University of Wellington. She is the author of the forthcoming essay collection Returning to My Father’s Kitchen, and the story collection Love and Other Rituals. Her work has been recognized as Notable in the Best American Essays 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2016. She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the I-Park Foundation, and others.