Our 2025 Fellows
Courtney Eason
WLT 2025 Fellow
Courtney Eason is a writer in Fort Worth, Texas.
“Reading and writing are, and have always been, as close to me as my own breath. I write to understand this paradoxical life and to hear my own voice over the cacophony of modern existence. I write personal essays and poetry, and currently, I am working on a memoir that weaves my personal experience of loss and recovery with connections to literature, natural phenomena, and neuroscience.”
Kai Haggerty
WLT 2025 Bess Whitehead Scott Creative Writing Fellow
Kai Haggerty is a writer in Sugar Land, Texas.
“As a hybrid and experimental storyteller, I weave together poetry and playwriting to explore how family structures, sacred spaces, and multicultural/Black identity transform under the pressures of sociopolitical forces, amplifying voices that have historically been silenced or pushed to the margins.
My work breaks traditional forms to forge new pathways of meaning, creating stories that celebrate and excavate the complexities of cultural hybridity, historical memory, invisibility, and mental health issues.”
About the Bess Whitehead Scott Fellowship: Formerly a scholarship, the Bess Whitehead Scott Fellowship is awarded to one writer over the age of 40 every year, selected from the pool of fellowship applicants, who we believe embodies the spirit of Bess Whitehead Scott, a Texas writer, a friend of the WLT, and a trailblazer who served as inspiration to so many. You can learn more about Bess and her legacy here.
Cody Marsh
WLT 2025 Fellow
Cody Marsh is a writer in Frisco, Texas.
“My work explores the lives of rural people plagued by poverty, addiction and the prison system. I am driven by the lostness and violence of these regions as well as their hope for salvation, both political and religious.”
Danielle Roberson
WLT 2025 Fellow
Danielle Roberson is a writer in Irving, Texas.
“Writing is my tool to better understand the world around me, to decipher its inner workings and arbitrary intricacies. I like sharing this curiosity with readers by lacing speculative stories with tiny mirrors that reflect our society so that we may question it in new ways. My greatest hope for my work is that it inspires readers to challenge the status quo and to demand a better, more empathetic reality.”
Sarah Malik Sayed
WLT 2025 Fellow
Sarah Malik Sayed is a writer in Austin, Texas.
“When writing, I carry the spirit of my grandfather, who devoted his life to literature and philosophy and wrote — on a thin board he placed across the arms of his chair — to his dying day. He never published his work. I am haunted by this, in the way I am haunted by the stories we all hold within ourselves, the same way we all are haunted when we encounter a piece that transforms us. I hope to write and publish such work, and am grateful to WLT for the opportunity to improve my craft.”