The 2025 Kratz Summer Writing Fellowships
L-R, top: Kira Morton, Jupiter Berrysmith, Lea Singer, Emily Strickland; middle: Tovah Oslovich, Ciara Murphy, Sophia Leitner; bottom: Kristen Wheeler, Maryam Abdiruhman, Kristen Lim, Maya Platt-Chilkotowsky (not pictured: Wryn Rohan)
Each year, the Kratz Center for Creative Writing at Goucher College offers summer writing fellowships that range from $2,000 to $4,000. The Kratz Center is pleased to welcome the following new Summer Writing Fellows.
Maryam Abdiruhman will travel to France, England, and Ireland for work on a series of poems exploring the scope of the world beyond her immediate community, including locations in Europe that are markers for Black figures and times in history where opposing the status quo was necessary.
Jupiter Berrysmith will attend a writing retreat in the rural Scottish Highlands to produce a series of poems inspired by natural surroundings and themes of grief and life changes.
Sophia Leitner will travel for work on a narrative that compares the exceptionally unique natural biosphere of the Galapagos Islands to the development of its inhabited islands and the volatile state of Ecuador’s southern mainland.
Kristen Lim will travel to conduct research and write a contemporary coming-of-age screenplay based in Ocean City, MD. She will also create an eyewitness visualization of the potential film.
Kira Morton will travel from Scotland to London for work on a series of ekphrastic poems covering the complicated histories of looted artifacts on display at the British Museum.
Ciara Murphy will travel to Ireland to research the relationship between Irish American identity and her far-removed lineage to the country itself through a series of poems.
Tovah Oslovich will travel to New Orleans to produce a collection of short stories about a variety of characters based on local ghost stories, haunted locations, and actual historical events.
Maya Platt-Chilkotowsky will travel to Ithaca, NY and its surrounding areas in order to write a novella-length psychological thriller murder mystery set in the late '80s/early '90s.
Wryn Rohan will travel to Malta and Sicily for work on poems that seek to uncover the delicate vibrations, harmonies, and rhythms of daily life in a region shaped by the historic colonizing powers of the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, French, and British.
Emily Strickland will travel to Singapore to conduct research for a long form creative nonfiction piece focusing on the different narratives that exist as fact within one’s family history.
Lea Singer will attend a writing conference to work on short fiction about a young woman who is sent away to her grandmother’s house in rural Italy, where she uncovers secrets in her mother’s past.
Kristen Wheeler will attend StokerCon in Stamford, CT, for her work-in-progress thriller novel project.