Apply to be a BookEnds Fellow!
BookEnds is an innovative, yearlong and low-residency novel revision program, giving writers the tools, support, and community to take their work from promising draft all the way to completion. Co-directed by Meg Wolitzer and Alison Fairbrother, BookEnds has a remarkable success rate: 20% of our alums have published novels, and more than 35% have literary agents.
As a BookEnds fellow, you’ll spend a year writing, revising, and editing your manuscript alongside a small cohort of talented fiction writers with promising novel drafts. You’ll dive deep into your characters’ worlds using the unique BookEnds methodology and interrogatory techniques, with distinguished mentors such as Karen E. Bender, Lincoln Michel, Mateo Askaripour and Stephanie Wambugu to guide you along the way.
Successful applicants must demonstrate a sustained commitment to their manuscripts,
as well as the ability to work well in groups (what we call “pods”), to give and receive
constructive feedback. The program unfolds in four parts. First, Fellows are introduced
to BookEnds’ unique revision process during several virtual meetings in May and June
2027, before we meet in July 2027 for a five-day intensive at the Southampton Writers
Conference. During the Fall semester, Fellows meet virtually with their pods every
other week, and stay in close communication with the entire Fellowship on Slack throughout
the year. Throughout the Spring semester, each Fellow works with a mentor, a successful
novelist, with whom they have a one-on-one relationship to guide and support their
revisions. Finally, in July 2028, the cohort returns to the Southampton Writers Conference
for a graduation reading, a one-on-one meeting with an agent who has read the Fellow’s
full manuscript, and a retreat to welcome our graduates to our vibrant alumni community.
Aside from the Southampton Writers Conference, the majority of the program is completed
online, which makes BookEnds a wonderful choice for the working writer.
Application Requirements:
Bookends has a remarkable success rate.
Applications for the 2027-2028 Fellowship Eleven will open November 15, 2026, and close January 1, 2027. We will accept applications on a rolling basis until we hit 50 applications, or reach the deadline on January 1, whichever comes first. For updates and with any questions, write to us at BookEnds@stonybrook.edu.
Apply to be a BookEnds Fellow!
We invite you to join us for our virtual Open House on Tuesday, October 27, 4-5 pm ET. Register here!
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Meet Our Team
A faculty member of the Department of Creative Writing, Meg Wolitzer is program co-director of BookEnds. Her novels include The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife, among others. Wolitzer, who has also written books for young readers, was guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017. She is host of the literary radio show and podcast Selected Shorts.
A lecturer in the Department of Creative Writing, Film & Television, and co-director of BookEnds, Alison Fairbrother is the author of the novel The Catch, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a People magazine “Best New Book.” She was an associate editor at Riverhead Books before coming to Stony Brook, where she worked with New York Times bestselling and award winning authors. A graduate of Stony Brook’s MFA program, she was a BookEnds fellow during the program’s inaugural year.
A lecturer in the Department of Creative Writing, Film & Television, JP Solheim is Associate Director of BookEnds. They were a BookEnds Fellow in 2020. They have taught at Stony Brook University, University of Michigan, Université de Paris VII, and University of Illinois—Chicago, in addition to creative writing workshops at the Northwestern Summer Writers’ Conference and StoryStudio Chicago, where they organize the Chicago Queer Writers cohort.
Mateo Askaripour’s first novel, Black Buck, was an instant New York Times bestseller and a Read with Jenna Today show book club pick. Askaripour was also selected as a recipient of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” prize. His work has been translated into multiple languages, including French, Spanish, and Portuguese. This Great Hemisphere, his second novel, was published in 2024 and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and Boston Globe. His third novel, Pure Ox, is forthcoming with Dutton in January 2027.
Karen E. Bender
Karen E. Bender is the author of the story collection Refund, which was a Finalist for the National Book Award and shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize, and Longlisted for the Story Prize, and The New Order and The Words of Dr. L, both longlisted for the Story Prize. She is also the author of the novels Like Normal People and A Town of Empty Rooms. Learn more at karenebender.com.
Alison Fairbrother
A lecturer in the Department of Creative Writing, Film & Television, and co-director of BookEnds, Alison Fairbrother is the author of the novel The Catch, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a People magazine “Best New Book.” She was an associate editor at Riverhead Books before coming to Stony Brook, where she worked with New York Times bestselling and award winning authors. A graduate of Stony Brook’s MFA program, she was a BookEnds fellow during the program’s inaugural year.
Yves Gleichman is the co-author of the novels The Very Nice Box (Mariner, 2021) and Trust and Safety (Dutton, 2024). Their short fiction has been anthologized and published in The Kenyon Review, The Harvard Review, BOMB, and elsewhere. They graduated from Brooklyn College's fiction MFA program and currently live and write in Brooklyn.
Kaylie Jones is the author of six novels, including A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, Celeste Ascending, and The Anger Meridian, and a memoir, Lies My Mother Never Told Me. Kaylie edited the anthology Long Island Noir. Her latest novel, Veritas, will be published in June 2027. She co-chairs the yearly $12,000 James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Kaylie is a full professor at SUNY Stony Brook and also teaches at the low-residency MFA Program at Wilkes University.
Lincoln Michel is the author of the story collection Upright Beasts (Coffee House Press, 2015), and the novels The Body Scout (Orbit, 2021) and Metallic Realms (Atria, 2025). His fiction appears in The Paris Review, Granta, F&SF, NOON, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. His essays and criticism have been published by The New York Times, GQ, Rolling Stone, and The Guardian. He is the former editor-in-chief of the website Electric Literature and is the co-editor of the Shirley Jackson Award-nominated anthologies Tiny Crimes (Catapult, 2018) and Tiny Nightmares (Catapult, 2020).
Richard Mirabella is the author of the novel Brother & Sister Enter the Forest, which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction and was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. His short fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, Split Lip Magazine, Story, and elsewhere. He lives in upstate New York.
Jane Pek was born and grew up in Singapore. She is the author of two novels, The Verifiers and The Rivals. The Verifiers was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, a Good Morning America recommendation, and a Phenomenal Book Club selection. Both The Verifiers and The Rivals were named a top ten mystery of the year by the Washington Post. Her short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2020 and 2021. She currently lives in New York.
Jackie Thomas-Kennedy’s debut novel, The Other Wife (Riverhead), was included in The New York Times 2025 list of “The Summer’s Best Beach Reads” and NPR’s “Books We Love” (2025). Her work has been recorded for NPR’s Selected Shorts, and her book reviews have appeared in The Washington Post, Harvard Review, Alta, and elsewhere. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, she has received fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Ucross, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia University School of the Arts.
Stephanie Wambugu lives in New York City. She was born in Mombasa, Kenya and grew up in New England. Her work appears in The Nation, Granta, frieze, Bookforum, and The Drift. Her debut novel Lonely Crowds was published by Little, Brown in 2025, and was named a notable book of the year by the New York Times, a must read book of 2025 by Time, and was a B&N Discover Prize finalist.
A faculty member of the Creative Writing & Literature Program at The Lichtenstein Center, Meg Wolitzer is program co-director of BookEnds. Her novels include The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife, among others. Wolitzer, who has also written books for young readers, was guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017. She is host of the literary radio show and podcast Selected Shorts.
Reiko Davis
Reiko Davis joined DeFiore and Company in 2016 after four years at Miriam Altshuler Literary Agency. Her tastes encompass propulsive literary and upmarket fiction, expert-driven narrative nonfiction, and middle-grade fiction and nonfiction. She’s particularly seeking family sagas, literary-leaning mysteries and thrillers, coming-of-age novels in unusual settings, and stories grounded in reality, but tinged with something else—a touch of magic or horror. She also loves to rep the occasional linked story collection. In nonfiction, she is looking for a personal story that illuminates a greater subject or analysis. In all of these areas, she strives to support underrepresented voices. Raised in Kansas City, MO, she graduated from Brown University. She lives in Jersey City with her partner and cairn terrier Norman. For a more detailed manuscript wish list and her client list, please find them here.
Calvert Morgan
Calvert Morgan, who recently joined Enliven Endeavors as a senior literary agent, is a longtime proponent of emerging literary voices. As executive editor at Riverhead Books and Harper, he has worked with groundbreaking fiction writers including Brandon Taylor, Jess Walter, Lidia Yuknavitch, Akwaeke Emezi, Hannah Lillith Assadi, Eloghosa Osunde, Caoilinn Hughes, Shannon Pufahl, Kate Zambreno, Blake Butler, Kristen Arnett, and Edward Carey. He has also published award-winning and bestselling nonfiction by Roxane Gay, Eula Biss, Jerry Saltz, Lauren Redniss, Stanley Crouch, and Molly Crabapple, among many others. As editorial director of the influential paperback originals program at Harper Perennial, he launched the short fiction project Fifty-Two Stories, publishing early work by writers including Catherine Lacey, Amity Gaige, Emma Straub, Brandon Hobson, Mitchell S. Jackson, Jamie Quatro, and Kelli Jo Ford. Cal also sits on the board of the Center for Fiction, America’s leading organization devoted to fiction, and served as its chair during its transition to Brooklyn, where it has become one of the nation’s most celebrated literary spaces.
Soumeya Roberts
Soumeya Bendimerad Roberts joined HG Literary as an agent in 2017. Soumeya represents award-winning and best-selling authors in literary and upmarket fiction, narrative non-fiction, and memoir, including Tara M. Stringfellow, Rosalie Knecht, Debra Jo Immergut, Melissa Coss Aquino, Fernando A. Flores, and Sonora Jha, among others. She also represents a curated list across creative fields including design, craft, and lifestyle by makers such as Darryl Cheng, Rachel Corry, Luke Pyenson and Alex Bleeker, and Tuft the World. She is seeking new voices in fiction and narrative nonfiction, especially stories about dynamic relationships between complex but sympathetic characters; families, siblings, and motherhood; social commentary; unconventional settings and subcultures; our relationship with land, nature, and animals; and controlled experiments with form. She is particularly, but not exclusively, interested in work that investigates or reflects on the post-colonial world, marginalized and liminal spaces, and narratives by people of color. In non-fiction, she is primarily looking for idea-driven or voice-forward memoirs, personal essay collections, and narrative non-fiction of all stripes. Soumeya is not looking for fantasy, science fiction, religious books, commercial romance, middle grade, young adult, or picture books.
Angeline Rodriguez
Angeline joined WME in 2022 after serving as an editor at Penguin Random House and Hachette Book Group, where she worked with a variety of fiction in genre, upmarket commercial, and literary categories, as well as select platform-driven nonfiction. She specializes in speculative fiction and loves high-concept stories that push the boundaries between genres. She is looking to work with writers that have a keen sense of worldbuilding in both real and surreal landscapes and is particularly passionate about highlighting underrepresented voices in new ways. She is first generation Venezuelan American, and now lives in New York.
Notable Work by past BookEnds Fellows
Important Dates and FAQs:
Required Meeting Dates
Fellowship Eleven (2027-2028)
Virtual orientation: May 11, 2027 (3-4 pm EST), and May 18, 25, and June 1, 2027, 1-4 pm EST
Writers Conference: TBA - Summer 2027
Virtual retreat: January 15, 2028, 1-4 pm EST
Writers Conference: TBA - Summer 2028
Total tuition is $10,400 (subject to change), paid in fall and spring in two lump
sums. There is also the option of a payment schedule that divides each half-payment
into three, each paid over the course of three months.
In addition, program fellows are expected to attend the Southampton Writers Conference. Typically, housing and food costs for the conference run approximately $1,000. We have a more exact estimate for these costs by the time of the interviews.
In addition, program fellows are expected to attend the Southampton Writers Conference. Typically, housing and food costs for the conference run approximately $1,000. We have a more exact estimate for these costs by the time of the interviews.
There are no full scholarships or stipends. There are no travel scholarships. We are the beneficiaries of a generous endowment, the Page One BookEnds Endowment,
that allows us to offer partial tuition remission to several of our accepted Fellows.
These scholarships are need based.
Applications for the 2027-2028 Fellowship Eleven will open November 15, 2026, and
close January 1, 2027. We accept applications on a rolling basis until we hit 50
applications, or reach the deadline of January 1, whichever comes first. For updates
and with any questions, write to us at BookEnds@stonybrook.edu.
The weekly commitment to BookEnds is about 20-25 hours. Most BookEnds fellows have
both full-time jobs and family commitments, and fit in the work in the early mornings,
late at night, and/or while commuting. How to prioritize writing is a question for
all writers, and this is a part of the conversation and support throughout the fellowship
and in the alumni group.
The fellowship is fourteen months in total. It begins in May 2027 with readings of
your podmates’ manuscripts and four virtual meetings in May and June. The program
ends with graduation and the alumni retreat at the Southampton Writers Conference
in July 2028.
BookEnds is a non-credit program. Most participants have completed a Creative Writing
MFA, though it is not required.
After graduation, BookEnds Fellows join our alumni community, which meets monthly
on zoom. Our alums organize literary readings, provide support during the querying
and publication processes, and continue to serve as readers and champions of each
other’s work.