The Adroit Journal Issue Fifty Five: Prose Release Reading

The Adroit Journal's October issue is particularly special, as it includes work by the recipients of both the 2025 Adroit Prizes in Poetry and Prose and the inaugural Editor's Prizes in Poetry and Fiction.

This virtual prose reading — which will be preceded by a virtual poetry reading the following night, October 28th — will feature some of our fall prize winners and runners-up. We hope you'll cozy up on your couch and join us!

LINEUP:

Rebecca Bernard is the author of the story collection Our Sister Who Will Not Die (Mad Creek Books, 2022). Her fiction has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Oxford American, The Cincinnati Review, Mississippi Review, and Southern Indiana Review. She is an Assistant Professor of English at East Carolina University, and she serves as a fiction editor for The Boiler and the North Carolina Literary Review.

Kaya Dierks is a senior at Yale University, where she recently received the 2025 Elmore E. Willets Prize for Fiction. Her stories appear or are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, The Adroit Journal, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. She was a Finalist for the Anthony Veasna So Scholars Program in Fiction.

Elizabeth Graver’s fifth novel, Kantika, was inspired by her grandmother Rebecca, who was born into a Sephardic Jewish family in Istanbul and whose shape-shifting life journey took her to Spain, Cuba and New York. Kantika was awarded the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, the Julia Ward Howe Award, the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction, and a National Jewish Book Award. It was named a Best Historical Fiction Book of 2023 and Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times, and a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Lilith, and Libby, and translated into German and Turkish. Elizabeth’s fourth novel, The End of the Point, was long-listed for the 2013 National Book Award in Fiction. Her other novels are Awake, The Honey Thief, and Unravelling. Her story collection, Have You Seen Me?, won the 1991 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and Best American Essays. She teaches at Boston College.

Kit Maude is a translator based in Buenos Aires. He has translated dozens of Latin American writers for a wide array of publications and writes reviews for Ñ, Otra Parte, and the Times Literary Supplement.

Lee Kyung Min is a writer and translator. She was born in Seoul, South Korea and grew up in Austin, Texas. She received a B.A. in Comparative Literature with a minor in Creative Writing from Princeton University and is currently pursuing a M.A. in Korean Studies at Yonsei University. Her translation of the novel A Mouth Full of Fins by Cho Yeeun is forthcoming from Doubleday UK in 2027. In her free time, she talks about translation and books on her YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@KateLee3

Patrick J. Zhou lives in Washington, D.C. with his family. His stories have been published in the Cincinnati Review, South Carolina Review, Quarterly West and hex literary among others and he has been honored with the 2023 PEN/Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, the Cincinnati Review’s 2024 Schiff Award for Fiction, and a 2025 Wigleaf Top 50. He also adds story notes and cat pictures at his website, patrickjzhou.com.