The Adroit Journal is an American literary magazine founded in November 2010. [1] Published five times per year by founding editor Peter LaBerge, The Adroit Journal is currently based in Philadelphia. The journal was produced with the support of the University of Pennsylvania's Kelly Writers House from 2013 to 2017 and was based in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City from 2017-2019 and 2020-2023 respectively. [2]
Authors featured in The Adroit Journal include Fatimah Asghar, NoViolet Bulawayo, K-Ming Chang, Chen Chen, Franny Choi, Alex Dimitrov, Mark Doty, Rita Dove, Terrance Hayes, Sarah Kay, Dorianne Laux, Lydia Millet, D. A. Powell, Diane Seuss, Danez Smith, Arthur Sze, Ned Vizzini, and Ocean Vuong.
The journal has published numerous United States Poet Laureate selectees, MacArthur Fellow honorees, Pulitzer Prize winners, and National Book Award winners, and contributors are regularly recognized by the Best American Series, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowships, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, Stanford University’s Wallace Stegner Fellowships in Poetry and Fiction, the Whiting Foundation’s Whiting Awards, and many more organizations that offer industry-leading funding and support.
Previous or current staff members of The Adroit Journal include Anthony Veasna So, Kinsale Drake, Leila Chatti, Aria Aber, Jim Whiteside, Rhodes Scholars Russell Bogue [3] and Aaron Robertson, [4] and Michele Selene Ang of 13 Reasons Why.
Pieces from the journal have been selected for inclusion in The Best American Poetry , [5] Best New Poets , [6] The Best American Nonrequired Reading , [7] Verse Daily, [8] Poetry Daily, [9] and Best of the Net, [10] and have been awarded seven Pushcart Prizes. [11]
Work first published in The Adroit Journal has also been discussed and featured in or by the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, American Life in Poetry, the Slowdown, Teen Vogue, PBS NewsHour, NPR, and College Board.
A video recording of Jim Parsons reading Max McDonough's poem "Egg Harbor", originally published in The Adroit Journal, was featured by The New York Times in February 2018. [12]
The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program is a free, online program that pairs experienced writers with high school and secondary students. Mentees have been recognized through the National YoungArts Foundation & United States Presidential Scholar in the Arts designation, the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and the Foyle Young Poet of the Year Awards. Participants have also been featured in Teen Vogue [13] and NPR, among other publications.
Gregory Djanikian was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and came to the United States when he was eight years old. He has published seven poetry collections, the latest of which is Sojourners of the In-Between (CMU Press, 2020). [14] The Djanikian Scholars Program recognizes six emerging poets each year, beginning with 2018.
| Year | Gregory Djanikian Scholars [15] |
|---|---|
| 2025 | janan alexandra, Akhim Yuseff Cabey, Lie Ford, Brian Gyamfi, Tyler Raso, & Giovannai Rose |
| 2024 | Aliyah Cotton, Majda Gama, Melissa McKinstry, Quinton Okoro, Edythe Rodriguez, & Syd Westley |
| 2023 | Erik Jonah, Willie Lee Kinard III, Emily Lawson, Sarah Fathima Mohammed, Kelan Nee, & Gabriel Ramirez |
| 2022 | Sarah Ghazal Ali, Leyla Çolpan, Jordan Escobar, Tennessee Hill, Anni Liu, & Avia Tadmor |
| 2021 | Jari Bradley, Donte Collins, Jane Huffman, L. A. Johnson, Natasha Rao, & Brandon Thurman |
| 2020 | Bryan Byrdlong, Steven Duong, Sara Elkamel, Matthew Gellman, Ae Hee Lee, & Gabriella R. Tallmadge |
| 2019 | Gabrielle Bates, Bernard Ferguson, Aidan Forster, Dan Kraines, Alycia Pirmohamed, & Leslie Sainz |
| 2018 | K-Ming Chang, Robin Estrin, Paige Lewis, Brandon Melendez, Michael M. Weinstein, & Keith S. Wilson |
Anthony Veasna So (1992-2020) was an American writer of short stories that often drew from his upbringing as a child of Cambodian immigrants. His debut short story collection, Afterparties, was published posthumously by HarperCollins in 2021 and was named a New York Times Bestseller and a winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize for Best First Book. [16] The Veasna So Scholars Program recognizes six emerging fiction writers each year, beginning with 2023.
| Year | Anthony Veasna So Scholars [17] |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Mayookh Barua, Hiya Chowdhury, Andy Lopez, Elisa Luna Ady, Nur Turkmani, & Yun Wei |
| 2024 | C. Adán Cabrera, Allison Field Bell, Cristina Fries, Devon Halliday, Lu Han, & Basmah Sakrani |
| 2023 | Vincent Chavez, Ani Cooney, Kelly X. Hui, Gracie Newman, Tierney Oberhammer, & Marguerite Sheffer |
The Adroit Prizes are awarded annually to two students of secondary or undergraduate status "whose written work inspires the masses to believe beyond feeling the work." [18]
| Year | Genre | Guest Judge | Recipient | Institution | Runner-Up | Institution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Poetry | Danez Smith | ||||
| 2025 | Prose | Aria Aber | ||||
| 2024 | Poetry | Ocean Vuong | Melanie Zhou | Stanford University | Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong | Columbia University |
| 2024 | Prose | Kaveh Akbar | Rosie Hong | Clements High School | Vivian DeRosa | Smith College |
| 2023 | Poetry | Natalie Diaz | Kinsale Drake | Yale University | N/A | N/A |
| 2023 | Prose | Ocean Vuong | Kelly X. Hui | University of Chicago | N/A | N/A |
| 2022 | Poetry | Arthur Sze | Ethan Luk | Princeton University | Natalie Jarrett | Northwestern University |
| 2022 | Prose | Kali Fajardo-Anstine | Nandita Naik | Stanford University | Sofia Miller | Denison University |
| 2021 | Poetry | Carl Phillips | Stephanie Chang | Kenyon College | Delilah Silberman | Bennington College |
| 2021 | Prose | Samantha Hunt | Enshia Li | Stanford University | Amal Haddad | Swarthmore College |
| 2020 | Poetry | Jericho Brown | Tariq Thompson | Kenyon College | Stephanie Chang | Kenyon College |
| 2020 | Prose | Kristen Arnett | Yasmeen Khan | Grand Oaks High School | Coral Bello-Martinez | Franklin & Marshall College |
| 2019 | Poetry | Franny Choi | Fiona Stanton | Interlochen Arts Academy | Daniel Blokh | Alabama School of Fine Arts |
| 2019 | Prose | Jamel Brinkley | Angelo Hernandez-Sias | Columbia University | Jason Lalljee | University of Chicago |
| 2018 | Poetry | Alex Dimitrov | Theis Anderson | University of Cambridge | Lauren Sanderson | Colgate University |
| 2018 | Prose | Rachel Heng | Polina Solovyeva | New York University | Sarah Feng | Pinewood School |
| 2017 | Poetry | Safiya Sinclair | Safwan Khatib | Columbia University | Christina Im | Sunset High School |
| 2017 | Prose | Allegra Hyde | Charity Young | Princeton University | Aidan Forster | SC Gov. School for Arts & Humanities |
| 2016 | Poetry | Corey Van Landingham | Rachel Cruea | Ohio Northern University | Theophilus Kwek | Oxford University |
| 2016 | Prose | Kevin Moffett | Brynne Rebele-Henry | Homeschool | Walker Caplan | Yale University |
| 2015 | Poetry | Tarfia Faizullah | Ian Burnette | Kenyon College | Brynne Rebele-Henry | Homeschool |
| 2015 | Prose | Alexander Maksik | Lydia Weintraub | Princeton University | John Stegner | University of Virginia |
| 2014 | Poetry | Richie Hofmann | Nathan Durham | Kenyon College | Ian Burnette | Kenyon College |
| 2014 | Prose | Wendy Rawlings | Isabel DeBre | Brown University | Madeleine Cravens | Oberlin College |
| 2013 | Poetry | Garth Greenwell | Shelley Whitaker | Hollins University | Jacob Oet | Swarthmore College |
| 2013 | Prose | Marlin Barton | Elizabeth Martin | Princeton University | Lily Fishman | Barnard College |
| 2012 | Poetry | Chloe Honum | Stephanie Guo | Canyon Crest Academy | Nicholas Pierce | Texas Tech University |
| 2012 | Prose | N/A | Phoebe Nir | Brown University | Flora Collins | Vassar College |
