Alumn John McManus (MCW 2004) is the winner of the 2024 American Short(er) Fiction Prize, judged by Dantiel W. Moniz for his story “Jack Sprat’s Wife.”

Moniz called McManus’ story “a gorgeously crafted and contained world, a peek inside the deep bowels of family, shame, and grief, which, although brief, also allowed me to see the characters past the page. From the first word, I tumbled into this story and was captivated until it let me go.”

John McManus is the author of the short story collections Fox Tooth Heart, Born on a Train, and Stop Breakin Down and the novel Bitter Milk. He’s the recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award, the Fellowship of Southern Writers’ New Writing Award, a Fulbright Scholar award in South Africa, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Literature Award, and a Creative Capital Literature grant. His MFA in fiction and screenwriting comes from the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas.

MCW Alumn Monica Macansantos (MCW 2013) been awarded a 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.

Rachel Kondo (MCW 2016), co-creator of Shōgun on FX, has been awarded the 2024 New Voice Award from Austin Film Festival. Kondo is being honored alongside the show’s co-creator, Justin Marks, who is receiving the Writer’s Writer Award. 

The AFF New Voice Award celebrates unique and captivating new voices in film, television, and new media.

More about the Kondo’s work, the awards, and this year’s Film Festival can be found here.