The HWA Scholarship Committee is pleased to announce the following recipients for this year’s scholarship selections. The committee would like to thank those who applied and the volunteers who reviewed the many applications we received.
Congratulations to all those selected!
Diversity Grant Recipient: Stephanie Malia Morris
Stephanie Malia Morris earned an MFA in fiction from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. She has received fellowships from Kimbilio, Periplus, and Voodoonauts, and is a graduate of the 2017 Clarion West writers workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in FIYAH, Nightmare, Apex Magazine, Lightspeed, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Her short story, “Bride Before You,” was adapted as a short film as part of the anthology Horror Noire on Shudder.
Diversity Grant Recipient: Frances Ogamba
Frances Ogamba is a 2025 Mercatus Center’s Don Lavoie Fellow at George Mason University, a 2025 Tin House Scholar, a 2024 Jacobson Scholar at the Hawkinson Foundation for Peace and Justice, and a 2024 Miles Morland Writing Scholar. She received the 2024 Walter H. Judd Travel fellowship, the 2024 COGS Research grant, and the 2022 College of Liberal Arts fellowship from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her awards include the 2022 Diana Woods Award in Creative Nonfiction, the 2020 Kalahari Short Story Competition, and the 2019 Koffi Addo Prize for Creative Nonfiction.
Diversity Grant Recipient: M. M. Oliva
M. Olivas is an alumna of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop and the Lambda Literary Workshop, and holds an MFA in creative writing from San Jose State University. She has been an Ignyte finalist and featured on the Stoker Awards longlist. Her fiction has appeared to critical acclaim in Uncanny, Apex, Weird Horror, and Bourbon Penn. As a trans, first-generation Chicana, Olivas explores the intersection of queer and diasporic experiences in her fiction. Her debut novel, Sundown in San Ojuela, is a Gothic spaghetti western in which Mexico’s indigenous and colonial pasts haunt California’s present. Olivas currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and, in her free time, collects transforming robots.
Diversity Grant Recipient: Maria S. Picone/수영
Maria S. Picone/수영is a queer Korean American adoptee and SFWA and HWA member who holds an MFA from Goddard College. She has several chapbooks including Anti Asian Bias, Adoptee Song (Game Over Books), This Tenuous Atmosphere (Conium). She has been published in Orca, Reckoning, and others including Best Small Fictions. A Novel Generator alumna, her work has also been supported by Lighthouse Writers Workshop, SCAC, South Arts, and Kenyon Review. She is Chestnut Review’s managing editor and edits at Five Minutes and Foglifter.
Diversity Grant Recipient: Abdulrazaq Salihu, TPC I
Abdulrazaq Salihu, TPC I, is a Nigerian Writer and Performance Poet. A member of the hilltop creative arts foundation, he has received residencies from IWE Nigeria, Frances Thompson Writers studio and is a 2025 Fellow at the LOATAD Black Atlantis. He won the Masks Poetry Award, LAP performance poetry prize, SOD, BKPW And poetry archive contest. He’s the author of Constellations and Hiccups and has his chapbook Quantum entanglements with notes on loss is forthcoming with Sundress Publication 2025. He has his works published/forthcoming with Palette Poetry, Frontier Poetry, Uncanny, Bacopa Magazine, Strange Horizons, Stachion, Consequence Forum, SofloPojo, Bracken Magazine, Poetry Quarterly and elsewhere.
Diversity Grant Recipient: Verdell Walker
Verdell Walker is a writer of speculative fiction from rural Georgia whose work is inspired by her heritage and her research. Her stories are published and forthcoming in Tractor Beam and Reckoning, and her nonfiction writing has appeared in Bustle, Vox, Forge, and ZORA.
Rocky Wood Memorial Scholarship Recipient: Victoria Timpanaro
Victoria Timpanaro is a PhD Candidate at Rutgers University – Newark, NJ in the American Studies program. Her areas of study are film, media, gender, and popular culture. She is currently working on a dissertation focusing on the work of George A. Romero and female representation in horror cinema. Victoria is a Humanities Adjunct Professor at Essex County College and Union County Colleges in New Jersey, as well as SNHU Online. She is also a filmmaker and musician.
Mary W. Shelley Scholarship Recipient: Emily Rosenthal
Emily Rosenthal (she/her) is a writer and illustrator based in Baltimore. She tells stories across age ranges and mediums, including picture books, graphic novels, and prose. She uses fantastical creatures and speculative elements to explore self-doubt, the nuances of butch lesbian identity, womanhood, and disability. Her debut picture book, Leroy Has Something to Say (illustrated by Thai My Phuong), will be published by Bloomsbury in 2026. You can find her watching B-horror movies, cuddling with her cat, and online at: emilyrosenthalart.com.
HWA Scholarship Recipient: Amanda Adgate
Amanda Havill Adgate is a writer and therapist whose work explores the dark intersections of trauma, memory, and the supernatural. With a background in mental health and a passion for gothic storytelling, Amanda weaves narratives that are both emotionally resonant and hauntingly atmospheric. Her fiction often centers on women navigating grief, isolation, and inherited horror, drawing inspiration from folklore, cult psychology, and feminist theory. She has published short horror stories in Gone By Morning, an independently published international horror anthology with proceeds going to We Need Diverse Books (2022), and Exquisite Poison, an anthology from Phantom House Press (2022). She’s also a member of the Horror Writers Association. She lives near the Appalachian Mountains with her feral children and the love of her life, where she balances writing with wild, wonder-filled chaos.
HWA Dark Poetry Scholarship Recipient: Abdulbasit A. Olúwaníshọlá
Abdulbasit A. Olúwaníshọlá, SWAN V, has works up/forthcoming in A Long House, ANMLY, Ake Review, BAM Quarterly, Poetry Journal, Poetry Column, Palette Poetry, Tahoma Literary Review, Ninshãr Arts, Rowayat, Haven Spec, Singapore Unbound, Sley House, Invisible City and elsewhere. He is a Best of the Net Nominee, and likes reading, meditating and bodying the facial expressions of the world with his writing and photography.
Sincerely,
Marge Simon
HWA Scholarship Committee, Chair
