Emerging Critics Program

About

The Emerging Critics Program is designed to bring writers of color, women writers and non-binary writers to foster a flourishing community of reviewers and critics.

Through partnerships with different literary and publishing organizations, the program aims to provide the platform for marginalized writers to develop connections with established critics in the field, as well as teach emerging critics the practical tools, skills and resources they need to enter the field.

The program will include conversations with established literary critics; workshops of reviews and literary criticism; review-writing sessions; pitching and publishing sessions, and more. Interested participants will also have the chance to receive sustained support from our organization to secure publication of their work.

Dates & Fees

The Emerging Critics Program will be held virtually on October 2 - 6, 2023. Although the program runs for five days, the work of engaging with program participants will be sustained for at least six months. This means interested participants can continue to use Anaphora’s support to sustain their singular pathways into the field.

The program costs $1,200 to attend; several partial fellowships will be available depending on funding availability. Applications must be submitted by the priority deadline to be eligible for fellowships. Anaphora Fellows and returning alumni will have the opportunity to attend the program at a discounted rate.

Applications are now open! Apply by the priority deadline of July 25th to be eligible for fellowships. Please note that we have limited space available; applications may close early if we reach capacity before the deadline.

If you have any questions, please check out the residency’s FAQ page, or contact us.

What to Expect

The program includes conversations with renown and award-winning critics and reviewers; sessions to discuss how to engage and pursue literary criticism; workshops of reviews and criticism with guest speakers; peer-lead critiques and review-writing sessions, and more. Additionally, through Anaphora’s ongoing partnerships with publishers, presses and various literary journals and magazines, participants will have access to forthcoming titles for review, based on their aesthetic, expertise and areas of interest. Anaphora will also help facilitate publication of reviews and literary criticism produced by participants through our partner organizations.

Speakers

Claire Dederer

Claire Dederer is a bestselling memoirist, essayist, and critic. Her books include the critically acclaimed Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning, as well as Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses, which was a New York Times bestseller. Poser has been translated into eleven languages, optioned for television by Warner Bros., and adapted for the stage. In April 2023 Knopf will publish Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, Dederer’s nonfiction book investigating good art made by bad people. A hybrid of essay, criticism, and memoir, Monsters is based on her globally viral 2017 essay for the Paris Review, “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?” Dederer is a longtime contributor to The New York Times. Her essays, criticism, and reviews have also appeared in The Paris Review, The Atlantic, The Nation, Vogue, Marie Claire, Elle, Real Simple, Entertainment Weekly, New York magazine, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, Slate, Salon, High Country News, and many other publications. She began her career as the chief film critic for Seattle Weekly. Dederer currently teaches at the Pacific University low-residency MFA program. She is the recipient of a Hedgebrook residency and a Lannan Foundation residency. Dederer lives on her late father’s houseboat in Seattle.

Lynell George

Lynell George is a Los Angeles-based journalist, essayist and author. She has had a long career in L.A. journalism as staff writer for both the Los Angeles Times and L.A. Weekly -- focusing on social issues, human behavior,  visual arts, music and literature. Her work has appeared in Oxford American,  Alta: Journal of California,  Sierra, The New York Times, Smithsonian, among other publications.  She is  the author of  No Crystal Stair: African Americans in the City of Angels (Verso/Doubleday), a collection of features and essays drawn from her reporting; After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame. She won a 2017 GRAMMY for her liner notes Otis Redding Live at the Whisky A Go Go and is a 2020 recipient of  a Distinguished  Journalist award from the Society of Professional Journalists/Los Angeles. Her latest book, A Handful  of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler is  a finalist for a Hugo Award. It was published in 2020 by Angel City Press.

Maya C. Popa

Maya C. Popa is the author of Wound is the Origin of Wonder (W. W. Norton, 2022) and American Faith (Sarabande, 2019), which was a recipient of the North American Book Prize and a runner-up in the Kathryn A. Morton Prize judged by Ocean Vuong. She is also the author of two chapbooks, both from the Diagram Chapbook Series: You Always Wished the Animals Would Leave (2018) and The Bees Have Been Canceled (2017). She is the Poetry Reviews Editor at Publishers Weekly and teaches poetry at NYU. She is director of creative writing at the Nightingale-Bamford school where she oversees visiting writers, workshops, and readings. She holds degrees from Oxford University, NYU, and Barnard College and is currently pursuing her PhD on the role of wonder in poetry at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Parul Sehgal

Parul Sehgal is a book critic at The New York Times. She was previously a columnist and senior editor at The New York Times Book Review. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Slate, Bookforum, The New Yorker, Tin House, and The Literary Review, among other publications, and she was awarded the Nona Balakian Award from the National Book Critics Circle for her criticism. She has been a featured speaker at TED and teaches at NYU’s Graduate Creative Writing Program.

Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women and the New York Times bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is also at work on television and film projects. She also has a newsletter, The Audacity and once had a podcast, The Roxane Gay Agenda.

Ruben Quesada

Ruben Quesada is the editor of a hybrid collection, Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry (2022). He is the author of Jane: La Segua (2023), Revelations (2018), and Next Extinct Mammal: Poems (2011). His writing appears in The New York Times, Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, Kirkus, and Harvard Review. He has received fellowships and grants from Canto Mundo, Lambda Literary Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events at the City of Chicago. He serves on the National Book Critics Circle board and is the 2022 chair for the award in nonfiction. He is an Associate Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters. He teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Antioch University-Los Angeles and for the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.