The Sun Valley Writers’ Conference is committed to supporting aspiring writers and providing them with inspiration and direction as they embark on their creative paths. In 2023, we expanded our Writing Fellows Program to include talented young writers from programs around the nation. These have included the IOWA WRITERS’ WORKSHOP, WRITEGIRL LA, the INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN INDIAN ARTS, BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY’s Creative Writing MFA Program, and more.

We are excited to announce our group of 2025 Writing Fellows, who will be joining us to soak up all there is to learn at the 2025 Sun Valley Writers’ Conference.

TRACY ABEYTA

Tracy Abeyta is a third grade dropout who didn’t get a GED but did snag an MFA from the Institute for American Indian Arts. She’s published short stories in Hobart Pulp, the Brooklyn Review, Diagram, Boston Review, Epoch and Prairie Schooner. She has received support to attend Breadloaf, Kenyon Review, the Fine Arts Work Center, and Tin House. An excerpt from her book, Calavera, was a top ten finalist for the Sewanee Review’s Nonfiction Contest. She teaches literature and lives in Oakland with a free-roaming lionhead rabbit, Betty, who is two pounds but can eat a tunnel through a couch.

DEESOUL CARSON (pictured)

DeeSoul Carson is a poet and educator from San Diego, CA, currently residing in Brooklyn, NY. His work is featured in Muzzle Magazine, AGNI, The Offing, & elsewhere. His chapbook, Running From Streetlights (2020), is a meditation on Blackness in America during the “Summer of Racial Reckoning.” A Stanford University alum, DeeSoul has received fellowships from the NYU MFA program, the Watering Hole, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His debut full-length, The Laughing Barrel, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in Spring 2027. Find more of his work at deesoulpoetry.com.

YOHANCA DELGADO

Yohanca Delgado’s recent fiction appears in The Best American Short Stories 2022, The O. Henry Prize Stories 2022, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021, The Paris Review, One Story, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere. Her recent essays appear in TIME, The Believer, and New York Times Magazine. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from American University and is a graduate of the Clarion workshop and the National Book Critics Circle Emerging Fellows program. She is a recent Wallace Stegner fiction fellow at Stanford University and a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts fellow.

JUNGIN ANGIE LEE

Jungin Angie Lee is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she earned an MFA in fiction. Her writing has been supported by the University of Iowa, Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale Foundation, Tin House Summer Workshop, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and elsewhere.

LEWIS MILLHOLLAND

Lewis Millholland is a writer, former journalist, and maker of bad video games. His fiction and essays have appeared in journals including Passages North, DIAGRAM, and The Garlic Press. Currently he is an MFA candidate at Boise State University, where he lives with a stolen (rescued) jade plant. His work can be read online at lewismillholland.com.

CHARLES PINEDA

Charles Pineda was born and raised near New Orleans, LA. After achieving his first master’s degree for Film & Theatre in the UK he worked for much of the last decade in entertainment and tech. Since turning to writing, his fiction, nonfiction, and poetry can be seen from such varied outlets as The Hooghly Review, IdaHome Magazine, Shotgun Honey, and several others, with work currently nominated for the 2025 Best Small Fictions anthology. An MFA candidate at Boise State University, he lives in Idaho with his dog, Luna.

KATE SOULLIERE

Kate Soulliere is an MFA candidate in Fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she teaches undergraduate creative writing and is a recipient of the James Patterson Scholarship.

KAREN VARGAS

Karen Vargas is a writer and a weaver from the Upper Rio Grande in Taos, New Mexico, and an MFA fiction candidate at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in Epoch, Terrain, BorderloreJournal, Pleiades Magazine (forthcoming) and others. She is the recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, a Truman Capote Award, and a Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics Summer Exchange Fellowship. She lives six miles east of the Rio Grande Gorge and is working on a first book of fiction.

We thank our donors and their generosity for making this special program possible. To learn more about supporting SVWC, visit our donations page.