Each year, together with the Talve-Goodman Family, One Story awards one writer the Adina Talve-Goodman Fellowship. Honoring the memory of author and former One Story Managing Editor Adina Talve-Goodman, this educational fellowship offers a year-long mentorship on the craft of fiction writing with One Story magazine. Our hope is to give a writer outside of the fold a significant boost in their career.
The Fellow Receives:
- Access to One Story online classes.
- Admission to One Story’s Writing Circle.
- Stipend ($2,000) and free admission to One Story’s week-long summer writers’ conference, which includes craft lectures, an intensive fiction workshop, and panels with literary agents and publishers.
- A full manuscript review and consultation with One Story Executive Editor Hannah Tinti (story collection or novel in progress up to 150 pages/35,000 words).
Requirements
This fellowship calls for an early-career writer of fiction who has not yet published a book and is not currently nor has ever been enrolled in an advanced degree program (such as an MA or MFA) in Creative Writing, English, or Literature, and has no plans to attend one in the 2025 calendar year. We are seeking writers whose work speaks to issues and experiences related to inhabiting bodies of difference. This means writing that centers, celebrates, or reclaims being marginalized through the lens of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, class, religion, illness, disability, trauma, migration, displacement, dispossession, or imprisonment. All applicants must be at least 21 years of age as of January 1st, 2025. For complete eligibility details, please visit the FAQ at the bottom of this page.
Application Checklist
To apply to this fellowship you will need:
- A fiction writing sample (3,000 – 5,000 words)
- A personal statement (600 – 1,100 words)
- Two professional or personal references who can speak to your commitment to writing (no recommendation letters required but please provide: name, email, phone)
- A current resume detailing any work or educational experience. Please also list any writing classes you have taken, along with writing-related awards, fellowships, publications, and residencies (if any).
- All applications will be received via Submittable
- There is NO FEE to apply to this fellowship
Deadlines
- Applications for our 2025 Fellowship open on September 9, 2024 and close October 16, 2024.
- The winner of the 2025 Adina Talve-Goodman Fellowship will be publicly announced in January 2025
A Message From 2021 Fellow Diana Veiga
Past Winners
Keith Hood
2024 Fellow
Keith Hood is a former janitor and window cleaner. He retired from a job as a field technician for a Michigan electric utility after 32 years avoiding electrocution. His work has appeared in Blue Mesa Review, Quick Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, Your Impossible Voice, The Forge Literary Journal and Vestal Review.
Nathan Xie
2023 Fellow
Nathan Xie is a writer from Connecticut who now lives in New York. He is a 2023 Periplus Collective fellow. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and can be found in SmokeLong Quarterly, Waxwing, Ghost Parachute, and more. He is working on a gay, coming-of-age novel featuring a cult, a cello, and a Chinese-American family.
Ani Cooney
2022 Fellow
A UCLA and VONA alum, Ani Cooney is the winner of a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and a Manuel G. Flores Prize from the Philippine American Writers and Artists (PAWA). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and can be found in Best Debut Short Stories: The PEN America Dau Prize, Epiphany, LikeWise Fiction, and ONE Archives.
Diana Veiga
2021 Fellow
Diana Veiga 
is a Spelman woman, a DC resident, and a DC Public Library employee. Her short stories have been published in Barrelhouse, The Northern Virginia Review, and The Rumpus. She is an inaugural member of Kimbilio, a Fellowship dedicated to developing, empowering and sustaining fiction writers from the African diaspora. She is currently working on a collection of short stories that explore race and class in Washington, D.C.
Arvin Ramgoolam
2020 Fellow
For 16 years, Arvin Ramgoolam has lived in the heart of the Rocky Mountains in the small town of Crested Butte, Colorado and owns Townie Books with his wife, Danica. An immigrant, he was born in Trinidad and Tobago and raised in Miami Beach, Florida. His writing explores themes of otherness, the outdoors, immigrants, and pop culture, subjects that are innately central to his very existence.
He is currently working on a collection of short stories revolving around these issues. He is also at work on a novel about people from different backgrounds moving across land and time towards the western US, culminating during election night 2016. He is the father of twin four year old girls, Anya and Sahira, and the owner of Wylie the Wonder Dog, the best mountain dog ever. Read an essay Arvin wrote about Adina Talve-Goodman’s essay collection and his fellowship experience here.
Nay Saysourinho
2019 Fellow
Nay Saysourinho is a writer, literary critic and visual artist. Chosen by One Story as the inaugural recipient of the Adina Talve-Goodman Fellowship, her work has since earned the support of Kundiman, The Writers Grotto, The Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, Tin House, MacDowell, The Rona Jaffe Foundation and Yale. Her writing was a prize winner at the 2021 Tucson Literary Award and has been published by Kenyon Review, Ploughshares Blog, Fairy Tale Review, among others.
The eldest daughter of Lao refugees, she was born and raised in Québec. Influenced by the folklore of her home province, the oral history of her diaspora and the philosophy of Deleuze, her multidisciplinary work explores ways by which narratives are gathered, transmitted, and deciphered. She is currently completing her first novel, an ecological fairy tale set in Southeast Asia, and a series of fables using Lao weaving symbology. In June 2021, she joined an art research circle through the Nordic Summer University (NSU).
About Adina Talve-Goodman
Adina Talve-Goodman was born on December 12th, 1986. She was raised in St. Louis by her wonderful parents, Rabbi James Stone Goodman and Rabbi Susan A. Talve, along with her sister, Sarika Stone Talve-Goodman and her brother, Jacob Talve-Goodman. She attended Clayton High School and Washington University, where she studied performance studies, as well as women, gender, and sexuality studies. She became a well-known actress in the local theater scene, a Star Clown in an Italian clown school, played King Lear at the London Globe, and started seriously pursuing creative writing. During this time, at 19 years old, Adina received a heart transplant, due to a congenital heart condition, and began writing about it.
Adina started working at One Story magazine as an intern in April 2010. After a brief break she returned, first as an assistant and later as One Story’s Managing Editor, beginning in March 2012. Adina quickly became a vibrant and vital member of the New York literary community. Those who interacted with Adina through One Story’s editorial department, writing classes, or public events like the Literary Debutante Ball knew right away that she was special. She had a way of disarming—and charming—everyone. She filled One Story’s office with laughter, music and joy.
Adina spent many, many hours writing to emerging authors and encouraging their work. She had a strong interest in issues of embodied difference, illness, and suffering and helped One Story organize donations to prisons. Every day, she used her voice to amplify the voices of others. She had a knack for finding those who needed help and helping them, whenever and wherever they needed it. She was a lighthouse for her family, friends, and colleagues.
In 2015, she won the Bellevue Literary Review’s Non-Fiction Prize with her essay, “I Must Have Been That Man.” In 2016 she left our team and began her MFA at the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program. She was working on her first book when she was diagnosed with cancer. Adina passed away on January 12th, 2018.
Adina’s collection of essays, Your Hearts, Your Scars, was published by Bellevue Literary Press in January 2023. To read it is to hear her voice. We were so lucky to know her.
One Story is honored to be facilitating this fellowship with the Talve-Goodman family, so that Adina’s love of storytelling and her vision for a better world can live on.
If you wish to make a donation to the Adina Talve-Goodman Fellowship please click here.
FAQ
I’ve published a book. Can I apply to the fellowship?
No. This fellowship is meant for writers who have not yet published a book. If you have previously published a work of fiction, memoir, non-fiction book, poetry book, textbook, edited an anthology, or published as a translator in book form, you are not eligible. This includes books published by large and small presses, books published electronically, and self-published books.
I’ve published my writing in magazines, but haven’t published a book yet. Can I apply to the fellowship?
Yes.
I have a book under contract with an agent and/or publisher. Am I still eligible to apply?
No. If you get an agent or a book contract after you apply, you must immediately withdraw your application.
I have self-published a book. Am I still eligible to apply?
No. Self-published counts as published.
I published a book in another language. Am I still eligible to apply?
No. Books published in other languages count as published books.
Is this fellowship open to applicants outside the United States?
Yes.
Does any Master’s Degree disqualify me? Or just a M.A. or M.F.A. in Creative Writing?
If you have advanced degrees in Creative Writing, Dramatic Writing, Screenwriting, Playwriting, English, or Literature (in any language) you are ineligible to apply.
I was enrolled in an advanced degree-seeking program in Creative Writing, Dramatic Writing, Screenwriting, Playwriting, English, or Literature, but never completed it. Am I still eligible for the fellowship?
No. We are seeking applicants who have never been enrolled in these programs. If you’ve been enrolled, you are ineligible for the fellowship.
I’d like to submit a story of mine that’s been published in a literary magazine as my writing sample. Is that allowed?
Yes. Writing samples can be previously published works or unpublished works.
I’ve been published by One Story (or have a forthcoming publication with One Story). Can I apply for this fellowship?
- No. The purpose of this fellowship is for One Story to open new doors and make connections with new writers. If you are published by One Story, that connection has already been established.
I’ve been employed by One Story, or have volunteered for One Story as a reader. Can I apply for this fellowship?
No. To keep the judgment of this fellowship fair and impartial, we are excluding anyone who has worked or volunteered for One Story in the past or present.
Please contact fellowship@one-story.com for any other questions.
