Ten writers have been accepted into this year’s George R.R. Martin Summer Intensive Writing Workshop.
Medill received hundreds of applications from accomplished journalists around the world. The 2026 group of Fellows includes veteran journalists covering a variety of topics such as culture, fashion, finance, foreign policy, immigration, public health and sports. They hail from Canada, Ireland and the United States, and media outlets including the New York Times, NBC, ESPN and the Irish Times.
“We are thrilled to have such gifted journalists and storytellers in our third workshop,” said Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, George R.R. Martin Chair in Storytelling and senior lecturer. “The projects our 2026 Fellows have been working on are vital stories of our time. We look forward to helping them hone and introduce these novels to the literary world.”
Over the course of the seven-day workshop, Fellows will attend craft-focused classes taught by award-winning novelists, attend firesides with visiting authors, have the opportunity to meet literary agents and have concentrated writing time. Twenty-two journalists attended this workshop in its first two years, and some have recently completed first drafts of their novels.
“This workshop would not be happening without the vision and generosity of George R.R. Martin,” Tan said. “We are enormously grateful.”
This year’s participants are:
Dotun Akintoye
Staff Writer at ESPN The Magazine
Akintoye is a writer and former editor at ESPN. His work has appeared in print, digital, audio and television, and his writing has been anthologized in The Best American Magazine Writing and recognized by the National Association of Black Journalists and the Associated Press Sports Editors. A former Nieman Fellow, he was a finalist for the 2022 National Magazine Award in profile writing.
Catherine Baab
Staff Reporter at Quartz
Baab is a senior reporter at Quartz who covers markets through breaking news and long-form features, with a focus on explaining complex financial matters to help readers better understand stocks and the economy. Her recent work includes stories on AI regulation and First Amendment law, as well as on how the Trump administration’s changes to the tax code have reshaped tech employment. She writes a dedicated weekly newsletter, “Quartz Markets,” along with Quartz’s popular monthly culture newsletter, “Obsessions.” She’s previously contributed to the Wall Street Journal, Slate, CNBC, NBC News, Literary Hub, Electric Literature and many others.
Stella Bugbee
Editor, Styles at The New York Times
Bugbee has been the Styles editor of The New York Times since 2021. She was previously an editor at large at New York magazine and the president and editor-in-chief of The Cut. She came to journalism first through design and creative direction, with stints at Condé Nast and Ogilvy. At The Cut, she took that experience and reimagined a digital vertical beyond fashion, transforming it into a site about modern womanhood. It became a place where readers didn’t just look for what to wear, but how to make sense of the world. During the #MeToo era, The Cut published some of the most widely read, intimate and seismic journalism on the subject. Since arriving at The New York Times, she has applied that same capacious sensibility to Styles, sharpening its point of view and expanding its reach.
Cora Currier
Freelance Writer and Editor, Lux Magazine
Currier is a writer and editor with work in The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, ProPublica and many other outlets. Her reporting has long focused on the war on terror and U.S. foreign policy, which is also the subject of her novel-in-progress. Cora was a producer for “Serial Season Four: Guantánamo” and a reporter and editor at The Intercept, where she covered human rights, surveillance, immigration and other topics, and broke stories from the Snowden leaks. Most recently, she has been a contributing literary editor for The New Republic and is an editor at the feminist magazine Lux.
Monée Fields-White (MSJ95)
Managing Editor, Los Angeles Business Journal
As an award-winning journalist and proud Medill graduate, Fields-White’s path to fiction has crossed over several news media. That includes newswires, television news, magazines and documentaries. Her work has appeared in Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Markets Magazine, The Root, Crain’s Chicago Business, Fast Company and American Banker Magazine. She also co- produced the Discovery+ documentary series “Uprooted” (2022) and the Vox Media Studios/Netflix series “Files of the Unexplained” (2024). Currently, she serves as the managing editor of the Los Angeles Business Journal.
Aaron Fox-Lerner
Freelance Writer and Editor
Fox-Lerner is a Brooklyn-based writer of both nonfiction and fiction. He spent years living in Beijing, where he covered everything from banned film festivals to North Korean tourism. He’s written for outlets including Time Out, IndieWire, Eater, The Awl, Delayed Gratification and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He has also served as an editor for multiple independent publications, including Chaoyang Trap, a newsletter about Chinese internet culture, and Open Sesame, a print-only magazine about Taobao, China’s largest online marketplace.
Michael Marrero
Photojournalist and Visual Journalist
Marrero is a Cuban-American writer and visual journalist based in Key West, Florida. His short story “Saint Lazarus” will appear in Key West Noir (Akashic Press, 2027), and he is currently drafting “LOCURA,” a literary crime novel set in 1975 Key West. His work explores the Cuban diaspora, island mythology and cultural memory. As a credentialed photojournalist, his work has been distributed nationally through the Associated Press and Reuters via the Florida Keys News Bureau. His photography series “Orisha: The Lost Saints” received a Knight Foundation Grant and was exhibited at the Havana Biennial. His play “LOCURA” was produced in Havana, New York and Key West as part of a U.S.-Cuba theatrical exchange. His films have screened at over 100 international festivals, including Fantastic Fest and Fantasia. He currently serves as Executive Director of Williams Hall and is a permanent resident artist at The Studios of Key West.
Una Mullally
Columnist and Feature Writer at The Irish Times
Mullally is a writer from Dublin, Ireland. Her journalism and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, The Stinging Fly, Foreign Policy and The Irish Times, where she writes a weekly column on society, culture, and politics. She is drawn to stories and themes concerning emerging social, political, and cultural upheaval and change, and their consequences. She has covered the Irish abortion rights and marriage equality movements, the Irish far-right movement, the Irish language revival, the data centre industry and the dynamics of post-pandemic cities. She is the founder of the independent queer press, Sliver, and its zine imprint 4Ls Press. She is the author of two books on social change in Ireland, “In the Name of Love” (2014) and “Repeal the 8th” (2018).
Ashley Okwuosa
Staff Reporter at The Examination
Okwuosa is a Toronto-based journalist covering the food industry for The Examination, an investigative newsroom focused on global public health. Previously, she has reported on immigration, education, politics and related issues, and her work has been published by outlets including The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, WNYC, Quartz, TVO.org, and The Narwhal.
Laura Wides-Muñoz
Director of Standards at NBC News
Laura Wides-Muñoz is a director of editorial standards for NBC News Group, vetting coverage from conflicts in the Middle East to U.S. Immigration policy and the latest crypto legal battles. Previously, she oversaw standards for ABC News’ Washington bureau and the Miami-based millennial Fusion Network, where she also helped lead the investigative team and served as vice president for special projects. In addition to her experience in network news, Laura served as deputy bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times in Washington, D.C., and covered Hispanic Affairs and U.S.-Cuba relations for more than a decade at The Associated Press. Her book, “The Making of a Dream,” about the nation’s immigrant youth movement, was a semifinalist for the 2018 PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith nonfiction award. Laura began her career in journalism covering the end of the Guatemalan civil war. The experience inspired her to write her first (and so far only) novel. She is a D.C. native who now lives just outside the city with her husband, two teens and fist-bumping pup Lucky.
Ahmad is a Malaysian screenwriter, podcaster and food journalist. She was on the writing team for Emmy-nominated “Saladin,” Malaysia’s first fully-animated series. She has written and produced over 8,000 hours of food content, including a food drama series called “I Eat KL,” which the Asian Wall Street Journal called “a mouth-watering soap opera.” Ahmad’s first film that she co-wrote, “Motif,” featured a female cop on the trail of a small-town murder. She reimagined Walinong Sari into an animation short which has won film fest awards in LA, New York, Mexico, Chile and Japan. She also hosts the “Two Book Nerds Talking” podcast.
Armstrong is an award-winning journalist and professor at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She has reported from several countries, including Sierra Leone, Kenya and the Philippines, and reported from Haiti from 2010 to 2014, through grants from The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and NYU. She has been featured on NPR and the BBC, discussing rape in the camps in Haiti and HIV/AIDS in the aftermath of the earthquake. Armstrong’s work has been published in The Intercept, the New Yorker and other outlets. She has produced and directed documentaries, including one for CBS News about the role that poor mental health care provided by for-profit companies has played in an increase in suicides in state prisons. She directed a documentary about a young man who was incarcerated in an adult prison when he was 16, which was featured in the Social Impact track at SXSW.
Demillo hosts and reports for CUNY-TV’s Emmy-award winning “Asian American Life.” Her work has received multiple awards, including an Emmy in 2020 for her short documentary on a Philippine-based feeding program. Prior, she spent a decade as a reporter and anchor on the Emmy-award winning FOX-5 morning news show, “Good Day New York.” Demillo was a reporter for the Orange County Newschannel in California and the CBS-affiliate in Sacramento. She is also a tenured journalism professor at Saint Peter’s University and now serves as chair of the Department of Communication and Media Culture. Demillo is the recipient of a grant from the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium in partnership with Slice of Culture to help fill the void of local news in Hudson County, New Jersey. She received her BA in Journalism and International Relations from the University of Southern California and her MSJ from Medill in 1993.
Eng is an award-winning, veteran Chicago reporter. She has worked in Chicago journalism for more than three decades starting at the Chicago Sun-Times and moving to the Chicago Tribune and WBEZ. She has served as an Axios Chicago reporter since the summer of 2021. Eng’s great-grandfather came to Chicago in 1911 and opened Chinese restaurants that served as the inspiration for her first attempt at fiction.
Jaime is the youngest daughter in a tight-knit family, as Mexicans from Guanajuato, of Otomi and Purépecha heritage, who share a legacy of post-colonialism and migration. She is a graduate of Medill whose work has been published by Teen Vogue, The Los Angeles Times, Vice, i-D and more. Most recently, she served as the first-ever Head of Creator Content for The Los Angeles Times. Through culture-shifting journalism, Jaime strives to create digital and physical spaces that are more civically engaged, accessible and reflective of the real world. Her work explores how communities at the margins survive and thrive in the Western world; and the ways cultural phenomena, art and technology can affect populations in disparate ways. Occasionally, she writes personal essays.
Midgette was the classical music critic of The Washington Post, where she established herself as one of the leading voices in her field. She also wrote on the visual arts and did significant work on #MeToo. Before the Post, she became the first woman to write classical music reviews on a regular basis for The New York Times where she contributed reviews and features on music and theater. A graduate of Yale University, Midgette started her career as a journalist during the 11 years she lived in Germany. She is co-author of “The King and I,” a candid book about Luciano Pavarotti written with his manager, Herbert Breslin, and “My Nine Lives,” written with the pianist Leon Fleisher, who lost the use of his right hand and then regained it three decades later. She is working on a historical novel about the woman who built pianos for Beethoven.
Lekas Miller is a journalist who began her work in Palestine, covering daily life under Israel’s occupation for The Daily Beast, before moving to Lebanon—and then Turkey and Iraq—to cover the Syrian civil war, the refugee exodus to Europe and the rise and fall of the Islamic State for Vanity Fair, Deutsche Welle and other publications. Her favorite stories center around love and romance, particularly the ones that show the way that love can flourish in even the darkest places. Her first book, “Love Across Borders,” is a collection of real-life love stories of people who have been displaced by conflict and separated by borders, fighting for their happily ever after in a world that is divided by passports and papers. She plans to write a novel that follows the emotional journey of a young Palestinian journalist navigating life in London while still being tied to the Middle East.
Mumford is a writer and podcast producer, currently bouncing between Minnesota and places closer to an ocean. She started in public radio and now produces a morning news show with The New York Times audio team. Her work in various mediums has won a Peabody Award — and fourth place at the Minnesota State Fair quilt competition (category 205). During the pandemic, Mumford sculpted eight wire-and-mortar tentacles bursting out of her front yard; they’re still standing. She is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.
Pierre’s work centers the voices and lived experience of people and communities that have been historically marginalized. A former reporter and editor at The Washington Post, he was the initial impetus behind the 2006 groundbreaking series and later book, “Being A Black Man: At the Corner of Progress and Peril.” He was on the Metro reporting team that won the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting massacre in 2007. Pierre is the co-author of “A Day Late and A Dollar Short: High Hopes and Deferred Dreams in Obama’s ‘Post-Racial’ America.” He owns Bald Cypress Media and has provided media solutions to clients including UNCF, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Pierre has taught at Dillard University, Georgetown University and Howard University. Pierre graduated from Louisiana State University.
Rezendes is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist with the global investigations team at The Associated Press. His recent work includes an examination of child sex abuse in the Mormon Church and financial corruption in the Catholic Church. Rezendes is also a television writer, a screenwriter and a biographer. He is currently at work on a biography of the late Jimmy Breslin, the legendary New York reporter who gave voice to the powerless and helped create the New Journalism. Previously, he worked for The Boston Globe Spotlight Team where he shared two Pulitzer Prizes, one for revealing the cover-up of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, and one for covering the bombing of the Boston Marathon. Rezendes was running the marathon when the bombs exploded and worked into the night covering the tragedy. In 2015, Rezendes was played by Mark Ruffalo in the Academy Award-winning movie, “Spotlight.”
Smith is Reuters’ bureau chief in Seoul, where he oversees a team of more than 20 journalists covering both South and North Korea. He joined Reuters in 2016 in Afghanistan, then moved to Seoul amid the “fire and fury” of 2017. Smith went on to cover the Trump-Kim summits, lead a rare reporting trip to Pyongyang, and reveal the scale of North Korea’s pandemic border walls. First arriving in Kabul for the military affairs newspaper Stars and Stripes in 2013, Smith spent nearly five years chronicling the West’s attempts to extricate itself from the conflict and the increasing toll on the Afghan population. He has also reported on security affairs from Russia, Europe, Central Asia and Iraq, where he accompanied Shi’ite militias to the frontlines of the battle against Islamic State militants, and in 2019 he reported on the Hong Kong protests, including from inside the occupied Polytechnic University.
