The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers is proud to announce the ten educator-writers chosen to participate in our annual programmatic partnership with the Kenyon Review! Made possible by the Maurice R. Robinson Fund, this program provides ten educators who participated in the 2025 Scholastic Awards with full scholarships to the Kenyon Review’s Genre-Specific Summer Online Adult Workshops, as well as $200 stipends to support their writing practices. The following educators will join other writers and renowned faculty this June in cohorts focusing either on Poetry, Fiction, or Creative Non-Fiction.
Thank you and congratulations to the following ten educators for earning their position in this year’s cohort of educator-writers!
Natalia Fernandez
Tampa, FL
Fiction
Natalia Fernandez (she/her) a writer, educator, and mentor dedicated to fostering a love for reading and writing in young people. Originally from Tampa, Florida, she is deeply passionate about literature, storytelling, and the magic of language. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Young Adult Fiction from Converse University, where she developed her craft through workshops with published writers. Her voice is rooted in nature, transformation, and the Gothic. As an English teacher, her goal is to cultivate creativity and analytical thinking and guide students toward finding their voices.
Alexa Garvoille
Durham, NC
Creative Non-Fiction
Alexa Garvoille (they/them) is a writer, educator, and creative writing studies scholar. They teach Creative Writing, Women’s Studies, and American Studies at the School of Science and Math in Durham, NC. Over the course of their career, they have helped over one hundred young writers design and self-publish books and chapbooks in all genres. They also advise the school’s literary and arts journal. Their articles on writing pedagogy have appeared in English Journal, Imaginative Teaching through Creative Writing, and Workshopping in the Twenty-first Century; additionally, they serve on the board of the Creative Writing Studies Organization. They write poetry and creative nonfiction about gender, power, and growing up gay in Wisconsin. They earned a BA in Literature from Yale, an MA in Teaching from Duke, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Virginia Tech. In the fall, they will be entering their sixteenth year in the classroom.
Carly Gates
West Palm Beach, FL
Fiction
Carly Lynn Gates (she/her) is a communication arts teacher at Dreyfoos School of the Arts, a public arts magnet, where she teaches journalism and advises the nationally-recognized and award-winning newsmagazine, news website, and yearbook. She holds an MFA from the University of the South’s School of Letters. Her poetry has been published in Flint Hills Review, Hawai’i Review, and So to Speak, among others. Her fiction has been published in BlazeVOX, Coolest American Stories 2024, and Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts. She was a recipient of the Key West Literary Seminar’s Teacher and Librarian Scholarship in 2024.
Leigh-Michil George
Los Angeles, CA
Fiction
Leigh-Michil George (she/her) teaches in the English department at Geffen Academy at UCLA. Dr. George’s research examines romance, gender, and sexuality in the eighteenth century with a focus on the Black Atlantic. Her work has been supported by UCLA’s Williams Andrew Clark Memorial Library, Yale University’s Lewis Walpole Library, and the Huntington Library. Her writing has been published in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Rambling. She is currently working on two books, an academic monograph titled Regency Noir: Romance, Race, and Jane Austen and a short story collection.
Timothy Gomez
Duarte, CA
Creative Non-Fiction
Timothy Gomez (he/him) is a Chicano writer and educator. His prose and essays have appeared in various publications including No Tokens, The Boiler Journal, sin cesar, and Ed Post. He received his MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and currently teaches middle school English in Long Beach, CA.
Matthew E. Henry
Weston, MA
Creative Non-Fiction
Matthew E. Henry (MEH, he/him) is the author of seven poetry collections. He’s editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, the CNF editor at Porcupine Literary, and an associate editor at Rise Up Review. MEH’s poetry and prose appears or is forthcoming in Barren Magazine, The Florida Review, Had, Massachusetts Review, Mom Egg Review, Ploughshares, Stone Circle Review, Terrain.org, Whale Road Review, and The Worcester Review. MEH earned an MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. MEH writes about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground.
Thomas Juvan
Middlebury, CT
Poetry
Born in Vermont to parents who emigrated from Slovenia, Thomas Juvan (he/him) grew into language with an uneasy relation between what was written and what was said. An English degree from the University of Vermont led him to a job in a bakery, baking bread, discovering the pleasures of the hands as well as of the mind. An unfinished PhD from Brown University led Juvan to high school classrooms, where he discovered what it truly means to learn. According to Juvan, Chaucer said it best: “And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.”
Kathleen Keelty
Los Angeles, CA
Poetry
Having long ago abandoned the pursuit of perfect pedagogy, Kathleen Keelty (she/her) has gladly conceded that the source of education’s magic isn’t content or delivery; it is the product of intentional classroom culture. Before joining The Archer School for Girls in Los Angeles in 2018, Keelty taught for nearly 20 years on the East Coast in both public high school and private university settings. At Archer, she writes alongside her Creative Writing classes every day, modeling compositional risk-taking and sharing her own (very) rough drafts. A good day, according to Keelty, is one where students encourage one another and embrace the vulnerability necessary for a workshop class.
Callie Ward
Philadelphia, PA
Creative Non-Fiction
Callie Ward (she/her) is a writer and teacher living in Philadelphia. She earned a BA in Spanish and English from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in Iberian and Latin American Cultures from Stanford University. In addition to teaching English at a high school, she has taught humanities courses and workshops for university students and incarcerated students, and she has volunteered as a translator for immigration attorneys. She is originally from (and enjoys writing about) northern Nevada.
Alice Xu
Union City, NJ
Poetry
Alice Xu (she/her) is an English educator. She holds a BA from Princeton University and an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University. She has received awards for both her academic and creative writing, including Princeton University’s Edward H. Tumin Memorial Prize for English Senior Thesis and the Morris W. Croll Poetry Prize.