Fellowship for BIPOC Adoptee Writers
May 17, 2024 – The Starlings Collective is pleased to announced the recipient of its inaugural Fellowship for BIPOC Adoptee Writers, which actively supports the development of a BIPOC adoptee writer telling adoptee stories to encourage a literary future in which adoptees have the autonomy to advance their own narratives. Launched in summer 2024, the Fellowship is awarded biannually to one BIPOC adoptee writer. The 2024 Fellowship recipient in poetry is Kaci X. Tavares, and the runner-up is Katelyn Rivas.
The inaugural Fellow will receive critical mentorship from a published BIPOC adoptee author in their genre, professional development support tailored to the Fellow’s creative and professional needs, individual feedback on a manuscript in progress, a $500 unrestricted award, and more. The runner-up will receive a $250 unrestricted award.
Fellowship Winner: Kaci X. Tavares
Kaci X. Tavares is a bilingual poet and editor from Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. Her work has appeared in the Columbia Journal, and she co-edited Come Shining: More Poems and Stories from Fifty Years of Copper Canyon Press with Michael Wiegers. Tavares served as a Writing 360 mentor with Girls Write Now, and she holds degrees in English and English Education from Boston University and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. She currently champions poetry at Copper Canyon Press and lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Runner-Up: Katelyn Rivas
Katelyn Rivas is a poet, essayist, researcher, teaching artist and mother who examines themes of Black girlhood, transracial adoption, motherhood, abolition and care for Black bodies through her work. She completed an MA from Eastern University in Urban Studies and Community Arts and has a BA in English and Writing and Art and Design from Northern Michigan University. In 2019, she published the chapbook “Radical Self-Care for Black Women” and founded the Detroit chapter of The Free Black Women’s Library. She is currently at work on a memoir that is about her experience as a transracial adoptee composing her own definition of Blackness where she weaves personal and political narratives through braided essays that combine prose, verse and Black Feminist reproductive rights issues. When not writing she can be found adventuring with her daughter and partner, laughing with friends and dreaming up her garden.
Meet the 2024 Finalists:
Eva Song Margolis was born in South Korea and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her poems frequently explore identity, kinship, and loss. She received a B.A. in Anthropology from Occidental College. Eva’s accomplishments include being named a Loft Literary Center Mentor Series fellow, an Inroads Mentor fellow, and an Intermedia Arts Beyond the Pure recipient. Her work appears in Water-Stone Review, Moonroutes, MOONFRUIT, and Unmargin.
Kiera McCabe 隆春燕 is a poet-engineer currently based in New York City. Her poetry is largely marked by her experiences as a transracial, transnational adoptee raised in the rural west. She was longlisted for the 2023 Frontier Poetry Hurt and Healing Prize and her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Lucky Jefferson, Cosmic Double, and Storm of Blue. She has been involved in the Chinese adoptee community as an organizer and member since she was fourteen and was recently interviewed by Teen Vogue on the topic.
RL Wheeler is a writer who works at the rupture points of genre and discipline. Currently a student at Brown University, their work appears or is forthcoming in Waxwing, The Journal, Southern Humanities Review, wildness, The West Review, Lantern Review, Foglifter Press, and Gigantic Sequins, among others. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, finalist for Tinderbox Poetry Journal’s Brett Elizabeth Jenkins and Majda Gama Editors’ Prizes, and recipient of the Howard Nemerov Writing Scholarship, RL is an editorial assistant and poetry reader for Split Lip Magazine. Find them on Twitter @rlwheeler_ or at rachaellinwheeler.com.