2022 Jack Hazard Fellows

Jack Hazard Fellows are writers of fiction, creative nonfiction, or memoir. The $5,000 fellowship is awarded in support of an ongoing project in one of these genres. They are full-time, current instructors in an accredited California high school (grades 9-12, teaching in this 2021-22 academic year)—and contracted to return to their schools in Fall 2022. (For Summer 2023, writers who teach high school anywhere in the country will be considered.) The goal is to reward and incentivize talented writers who teach in secondary schools. These writers who teach inspire their students, high schools, and communities, and provide a professional model of writers working to find meaning and to create art in chaotic times.

New Literary Project celebrates their life-changing contributions, and gives them widespread public acknowledgement along with much-needed freedom to devote to their own writing. For many writers who teach full time, that’s what summer is for.

Read about these fellows’ experience with the program here.

 

Meet the 2022
Jack Hazard Fellows

Jack Hazard Fellows are writers of fiction, creative nonfiction, or memoir. They are full-time, current instructors in an accredited California high school (grades 9-12, teaching in this 2021-22 academic year)—and contracted to return to their schools in Fall 2022.

  • Albany High School
    Albany, CA

    But They Filmed the Movie Somewhere Else: A Novel

    Kevin Allardice, a graduate of UCLA and the University of Virginia, has published three novels: Any Resemblance to Actual Persons (Counterpoint, 2013), Family, Genus, Species (Outpost19, 2017), and As The Ceiling Flew Away (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022). His novella, The Ghosts of Bohemian Grove, is forthcoming later this year. He lives with his family in the Bay Area and teaches high school.

    Photo by Diana Thow

 

  • Honorary Fellow

    The College Preparatory School
    Oakland, CA

    Julie T. Anderson’s essays and stories have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Other Voices, Broad Street: A New Magazine of True Stories, To-Do List Magazine, and Writing From the Inside Out, as well as various anthologies. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley, focusing on Ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese poetry. From 2018-2020, she was a frequent contributor to Oakland Magazine, Alameda Magazine, and The East Bay Monthly. Julie was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016 and is the recipient of several creative writing and teaching awards. She is currently finishing her 19th and final year as an English teacher at The College Preparatory School in Oakland, CA.

    Photo by Jeff Schoenhard

 

  • Pacific Ridge School
    Carlsbad, CA

    American Diaspora: A Dominicanish Travelog

    Armando Batista is a trickster spirit in human form, hailing from Washington Heights, NYC. He is the child of Dominican immigrants and a card carrying hyphenate (poet-performer-educator-clown-drummer-diasporic traveler-liminal linguist). His poetry has been published in Death Rattle Writers Fest/OROBORO, Dominican Writers Association's first anthology of Dominican writing, Ni De Aqui, Ni De Alla, A Gathering of Tribes, and was translated and published in the Mexican literary journal CRACKEN. His essays are published in the online journals past-ten, The Maine Review, and The Abstract Elephant Magazine. His debut poetry chapbook, Cosmic Mesa, is published by Dominican Writers Association (DWA Press).

 

  • The Bishop’s School
    La Jolla, CA

    The Everlasting Goddamned Winter

    Adam O. Davis is the author of Index of Haunted Houses (Sarabande, 2020), which won the Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Big Other Poetry Book Award. The recipient of the 2016 George Bogin Award from the Poetry Society of America, his work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including The Believer, The Best American Poetry, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and ZYZZYVA. He lives in San Diego, where he teaches English literature at The Bishop's School.

    Photo by Nicholas Barrett

 
 
 

  • St. Mary’s High School
    Stockton, CA

    An Untitled Collection of Essays

    Sheila Madary is a writer and teacher from the Finger Lakes region in New York. In 2011, she received her MA in English from the University of New Orleans. For more than a decade, she studied, taught and raised her four daughters in Europe. Her essays have appeared in literary journals such as Brevity, Ascent and Dogwood. Currently, she teaches English in Stockton, CA.

 

  • Emery High School
    Emeryville, CA

    Children of the Orchard

    Molly Montgomery is a mixed race Chinese American writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. She has an M.A. in Creative Writing from UC Davis and a B.A. in English and French from UCLA. Her writing has been featured online in Entropy, X-R-A-Y, Sinking City, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and in print in Reading Critically, Writing Well (Twelfth Edition). She will also be published in the forthcoming anthology Processing Crisis by RiskPress. She is currently writing a novel inspired by her grandmother’s experience growing up in the Ming Quong Home in Oakland in the 1930's. When she’s not writing, she teaches 9th and 10th grade English at Emery High School in Emeryville, CA.

 

  • New Roads School
    Santa Monica, CA

    Jaani

    Mehnaz Sahibzada was born in Pakistan and raised in Los Angeles. She holds an M.A. in Religious Studies from UC Santa Barbara, and she is a former PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow in Poetry. She has served as a high school English teacher at New Roads School in Santa Monica since 2010. Her short story, “Death at the Samosa Cafe,” was published in the March 2022 issue of Mystery Magazine (2022). Her writing has appeared in various literary journals, including Uncanny, Ellery Queen, Pedestal, On the Run, Jaggery, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. Her first full-length poetry collection, My Gothic Romance, was published in April 2019 by Finishing Line Press. She is currently at work on her first novel, Jaani, a coming of age love story, teeming with ghosts and superstitions, that is set in post-partition Pakistan. To learn more about Mehnaz, visit www.poetmehnaz.com

 

  • Richmond High School
    Richmond, CA

    Soul Language: Stories of Soul Connections and Love

    Tori is a writer and educator in Richmond. She has taught English for eight years and worked to help young people love writing and words as much as she does. She studied creative writing at UCLA and earned her BA in English in 2013. At that time, she worked in tutoring and writing centers in LA which began her love for supporting language learners and young writers. In Summer 2019, she was accepted to the Scottish International University Summer Studies program on a teacher scholarship to work on her writing in Edinburgh. She is thrilled and honored to continue her writing through the Jack Hazard Fellowship.

 

  • Head-Royce School
    Oakland, CA

    I Think It’s a Lizard

    Andy Spear teaches English, Drama, and Journalism at the Head-Royce School in Oakland. Andy grew up in Berkeley, ventured away a couple of times, and eventually wound up right back where he started. He's written plays, produced theater productions, edited a couple of small journals, and been writing fiction and teaching for a good while now. His stories have appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Sundog: The Southeast Review, River City, and he wrote a poetry column for the Louisiana magazine Country Roads. He's also published a couple of poems, and a number of feature articles in various papers and journals. At the core of his life are his roles as father and husband; he's also an occasional bread baker, and he's getting a little better at tidying up.

    Photo by Celeste Spear

 

“My mother was a high school teacher while I was growing up, as well as being a talented painter, but during the school year she was so passionate about teaching that she simply didn't have any time to dedicate to her art. I remember how happy she was when summer came and she finally had the chance to sit down with her oils and easel and canvas and get lost in the art she'd dreamed of making all year long. The Jack Hazard Fellowship is a brilliant way to ensure that our teachers who are also writers have the time and freedom to devote to the art that sustains them.”

—Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies, Florida, & Matrix; 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Finalist

“When I think of the people who have supported and encouraged me throughout my writing career, it is perhaps not surprising that so many of them are teachers. This is particularly true of creative writing; now when I think back of those who taught me, I realize that many of them could only have learned the delicate art of balancing innovation and creativity with hard work if they were writers themselves. What a wonderful, creative fellowship this is, rewarding those whose dedication often goes unsung, so that they might enrich not only their own work, but the gifts they pass along.”

—Daniel Mason, author of The Winter Soldier & A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth; 2020 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Recipient

Jack Hazard Fellowships are sustained by the generosity of System Property. One hundred years ago, Mr. Hazard founded the company that has today become System Property. He was a larger-than-life, mostly self-educated, and deeply curious man who admired education and educators, someone who loved to hear and tell a good story. As a charismatic, visionary entrepreneur and generous philanthropist, he had a profound, unforgettable impact that resonates to this day. New Literary Project is honored and humbled to be associated with his legacy. We love a good story, too, and we believe that scores of good and great stories will come to life as a result of the annual Jack Hazard Fellowships.

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