06 May Announcing the 2026 JBLC Poetry Fellow
We are thrilled to announce the winner of the 2026 Poetry Fellowship: Siew Hii of Orlando, Florida. She is the author of Entered Some Aliens (University of Wisconsin Press, 2026) and teaches creative writing at the University of Central Florida. Hii will visit Buffalo this August for a writing residency and read at the August 29 Silo City Reading Series event.
“What drew me into these poems immediately is the intimacy of the voice. Reading these poems felt like being with a friend on a road trip, whose thoughts and feelings are as odd and as varied and as sincere as any other kindred spirit. This is a poet whose gaze both honors and desecrates everything within its purview. In short, I love the irreverence, the heart, the punchiness, the pain: all vividly rendered, all glorified and grounded, all mercilessly AND magnanimously catalogued.” —Tarfia Faizullah, 2026 Judge
In addition to naming Hii as winner, five poets were recognized as finalists from the pool of over 190 applicants. The 2026 finalists are Kianna Greene, Juliette Hagobian, Maryhilda Obasiota Ben Ibe, Vasvi Kejriwal, and Cassidy McFadzean. Join us in celebrating these incredible poets!
2026 Poetry Fellowship Winner: Siew Hii
Siew Hii (she/they) is the author of Entered Some Aliens (University of Wisconsin Press, 2026). Her prose and poetry appear at AGNI, Electric Lit, Story, Georgia Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Mobile, Alabama, Hii now lives in Orlando, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Central Florida. Her parents hail from Sibu, Malaysia and Kentucky, USA.
2026 Poetry Fellowship Finalists
Kianna Greene is a poet and writer living in Orlando, Florida, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Central Florida. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Epiphany, Salt Hill, Rust & Moth, Bellingham Review, The Citron Review, The Penn Review, The Indianapolis Review, Maudlin House, and other journals. She was the winner of Ashland Poetry Press’s 2026 Poetry Broadside Contest, a finalist for Frontier Poetry’s 2025 Misfit Poem Prize, and has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. Currently, Kianna serves as an Associate Poetry Editor for The Florida Review and Director of The Cypress Dome, the University of Central Florida’s undergraduate literary journal.
Website: kiannagreene.com
On Instagram: @kiannaelaine
Juliette Hagobian (she/her) is a writer from Los Angeles, California. She is currently a senior at Emerson College. Her works can be found in The Round, Concrete Literary Magazine, Surging Tide, and elsewhere. Right now, she is on her bed eating sumo oranges.
On Instagram: @juliette_hagobian
Maryhilda Obasiota Ben Ibe is a poet from Nigeria. She is a 2025 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow. She has been awarded the Indiana Review Poetry Prize, American Literary Review Prize, Bloomsday Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Porter House Review Prize. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming on Poetry Magazine, Indiana Review, Triquarterly, American Literary Review, Chestnut Review, Brittle Paper, and elsewhere. She has also received Best New Poets, Best of the Net and Pushcart nominations. She received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she currently serves as the Hoffman-Halls Emerging Artist Fellow (HEAF) in the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing.
On Instagram: @obasiotaibe
Vasvi Kejriwal is a poet from India. She won the Black Warrior Review Poetry Contest and was a finalist for Epiphany’s Breakout Prize and the Scotti Merrill Award. She is a recipient of the AI Young Memorial Scholarship from the Community of Writers Conference. Her work has also received support from Tin House and the Watering Hole. Her poems appear in Rattle, Four Way Review, Nimrod, wildness, and elsewhere.
Website: www.vasvikejriwal.com
On Instagram: @itsvasviii | @freshmintco
Cassidy McFadzean is a Toronto-based author of three books of poetry, most recently Crying Dress (House of Anansi, 2024). Her poetry has appeared in magazines across Canada and the US, and her fiction has appeared in Joyland, Hazlitt, and Dead Writers (Invisible Publishing, 2025). Cassidy was a March 2026 resident at the McCormack Writing Center in Portland, Oregon, where she worked on her debut novel, and is the 2025–2026 Poet-in-Residence at Arc Poetry Magazine.
Website: cassidymcfadzean.com
On Instagram: @cassidymcfadzean
The Just Buffalo Literary Center Poetry Fellowship seeks to advance the career of an individual poet as well as raising Buffalo’s visibility nationwide as a literary city. More information about the fellowship can be found here.