Free and open to the public, this reading will take place outdoors on the east side of the museum 

This event was rescheduled from its original April 6 date

Join Inprint for a celebratory reading of the 2025 Inprint Prize Winners. This spring, Inprint awarded 10 prizes ranging from $1,000 – $10,000 to 11 students studying creative writing at the University of Houston and one undergraduate at Rice University. The winners, selected by outside judges, will give short readings from their prize-winning works.

The reading will start with the three University of Houston undergraduate Creative Writing winners of the Alexandra L. Rowan Memorial Foundation Writing Competition.

The event will be part of the Menil’s Neighborhood Community Day. Earlier that afternoon, the Inprint Poetry Buskers will be on-site writing free poems for Community Day attendees. For the full schedule of the Menil’s Neighborhood Community Day events, click here.

Inprint has been proud to support some of the world’s top emerging writers through annual fellowships and juried prizes for graduate students at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program and an annual prize for an undergraduate at Rice University. This year alone Inprint has provided $271,500 in direct support to these students, and since 1983, Inprint’s support of 600+ emerging writers has totaled more than $5 million. Recipients of these fellowships and prizes come from all parts of the world and have gone on to impact our local and national communities through teaching, writing, publishing, and more.

2025 Inprint Prize Winner Readers:

Inprint Joan & Stanford Alexander Prize in Fiction: Nick Almeida’s stories and essays have appeared in Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Southeast Review, and elsewhere. Almeida, a PhD candidate at the University of Houston, is an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow and received the Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Nonfiction. He holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers, where he edited Bat City Review. His chapbook, Masterplans, was selected by Steve Almond as grand prize winner of the inaugural Masters Review Chapbook Open in fiction, and is available now.

Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing: Anna Barr is a writer from Michigan. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Fiction at the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program as an Inprint Mary Gibbs and Jesse H. Jones Fellow.

Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Fiction: Leah Fretwell is a writer from Salt Lake City, UT. She has been published in the Cream City Review, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. She is a PhD candidate in creative writing and is the recipient of the Inprint Mary Gibbs and Jesse H. Jones Fellowship.

Inprint Restrepo Americas Translation Fellowship: Julia Guez is a writer and translator based in the city of Houston. She is the author of The Certain Body (Four Way Books, 2022) and In an Invisible Glass Case Which Is Also a Frame (Four Way Books, 2019).  Guez co-translated Equestrian Monuments by Luis Chaves (After Hours Editions, 2022).  With the support of the Inprint Restrepo Americas Translation Fellowship, she is currently translating The Suicidal Hand by the Costa Rican poet, María Montero. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Houston, where she recieves support from the Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellowship.

Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Fiction: Will Lowder is a writer from Albemarle, North Carolina. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Fiction from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, supported by an Inprint Brown Foundation Fellowship. He currently serves as the Inprint UH CWP Fellow, and his work has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. 

Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry: Catherine Lu is an Inprint Mary Gibbs and Jesse H. Jones Fellow at the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program, where she is pursuing her MFA in poetry. Her poems have been published in Mom Egg Review and the Texas Observer. She is a longtime Emmy-nominated producer and announcer at Houston Public Media, has contributed to NPR, and was awarded a Houston Arts Alliance grant for her arts writing.

Inprint Paul Verlaine Prize in Poetry: Abigail Mengesha is a writer and editor from Addis Ababa. Her work has appeared in The Common, Mizna, Frontier Poetry, 20.35 Africa, The Margins, and other publications. She is pursuing her MFA from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, where she is an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow and is supported by an Inprint International Student Fellowship.

Alexandra L. Rowan Memorial Foundation Writing Competition Non-fiction winner: Jacob Myers is a graduate of the University of Houston. He was born and raised in the greater Houston area. Although he is open to reading any genre, his primary literary interests are nineteenth century French literature and southern gothics. His work has been featured in the PUBLIC | ATION chapbook for the Public Art  University of Houston system. Reading and writing are his two favorite hobbies, and whenever he isn’t doing one or the other, he can usually be found watching films from the Criterion Collection or taking long walks beneath the blue skies of Texas.

Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry and the Inprint Marion Barthelme Gulf Coast Prize: Kelan Nee is a poet and carpenter from Massachusetts. He is the winner of an Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Fiction, and has received awards from The Academy of American Poets, Adroit, and the Inprint foundation. His work has been published by Poetry Magazine, 32 Poems, The Yale Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, and is pursuing a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston, where he holds an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellowship.

Alexandra L. Rowan Memorial Foundation Writing Competition Poetry Winner: Eva Neuman is a senior at the University of Houston where she majors in English with a concentration in creative writing and a minor in film studies. Her literary idols include Emily Dickinson, Toni Morrison, and Audre Lorde. In the fall, Eva will begin her MFA degree in poetry, where she plans to focus on queer poetics. In her free time, Eva enjoys hobby film photography, the Menil campus, and spending time with her cat, Cooper.

Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Nonfiction: Catherine Niu is a writer from Marietta, GA. Her fiction and essays can be found in Cincinnati Review, AGNI, Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere, and her poetry has been exhibited in museums including the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and The Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. She is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Houston, where she is a Presidential Fellow and Inprint Fondren Foundation Fellow and Fiction Editor at Gulf Coast Journal.

Alexandra L. Rowan Memorial Foundation Writing Competition Fiction Winner: Daniel Olanrewaju is an English Major with a concentration in Creative Writing and a minor in Biology. He spent much of his younger years enjoying many cartoons, video games, novels, and web serials which now enrich and inspire his current works. When not writing, reading, or watching, Daniel likes to take long walks, simply taking in the world and people around him and letting it all lead him to another idea.

Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing at Rice University: Arianna Petteway is a senior at Rice University, double majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing and Sociology. As an aspiring MFA candidate in creative nonfiction, she is committed to using her writing as a tool of resistance—challenging systems of power and social norms both on the page and beyond. Her work explores the intersections of blackness and womanhood, examining how oppression shapes lives, especially black lives, and the ways to resist it.

Special thanks to Joan and the late Stanford Alexander, The Friends of Marion Barthelme, Nina and Michael Zilkha, and the Inprint Board of Directors, who make these prizes possible. Inprint also receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Jerry C. Dearing Family Foundation, Houston Endowment, The City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.