We’re pleased to announce the recipients of BIPOC Scholarships to the 2026 Washington Writers Conference! Each winner will attend our May event for free!

Tracy Cross conjures horror from folklore, ancestral memory, and Southern gothic dread. Her Conjure Series — Rootwork and A Gathering of Weapons — hexes readers with karmic justice, deep faith, and lingering darkness. A Ladies of Horror Fiction Grant recipient and HWA Scholarship from Hell honoree, she doesn’t write horror — she casts it.

Aaron Hwang, a perpetual student of monsters, games, fantasy, and his inner child, is a 2020 MFA graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has published three books with Hachette Book Group, and his latest, Chinese Mythology, was picked for the CBC’s Kids’ Favorite and Teachers’ Favorite lists for 2026.

Kaetochi Nwodo is a writer living in DC with her wife, cat, and long-suffering plants. In her free time, she loves cuddling with said wife and cat, eating ice cream, and watching horror movies. You can find her on Substack and Instagram at @kaetochiwrites.

Megan Howell is a DC-based writer and a 2025 National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree. She earned her MFA in fiction from the University of Maryland in College Park, winning both the Jack Salamanca Thesis Award and the Kwiatek Fellowship. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, the Nashville Review, and the Establishment, among other publications. Her debut short-story collection, Softie: Stories, won a 2025 IPPY Book Awards gold medal and was shortlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize.

Milou de Meij is a speculative fiction writer based in Washington, DC. A former classical pianist, she is obsessed with stories about music, ambition, and identity. Her current project is about former lovers turned rival composers in the afterlife competing to win their lives back. Outside of writing, she enjoys chess and long walks through the city.

The 2026 Washington Writers Conference happens May 1-2 at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center in Rockville, MD. Learn more here.