PEN America received the highest number of applicants in 29 years for its 2026 Emerging Voices Fellowship, and among the eleven writers selected from that extraordinary pool is Chisaraokwu Asomugha, an Igbo American poet whose work sits at the intersection of archival research, visual art, and diaspora memory. She is the only African writer in the cohort.

Asomugha, who goes by .CHISARAOKWU., is a transdisciplinary poet-artist whose practice weaves archival text, collage, and film to explore memory and identity in West Africa and its diaspora. It is a practice that reaches in multiple directions at once, and one that has already earned her considerable recognition. She is a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Poetry, and her fellowship support spans some of the most respected institutions in African and American literary culture, including Cave Canem, MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, Anaphora Arts, the Black Genius Foundation, the California Arts Council, and Ucross.

Her poems have appeared in ANMLY, Beloit Poetry Journal, Indiana Review, Obsidian, and Lolwe, the latter a particularly meaningful placement for readers of African literature. She also received an Honorable Mention for the 2023 Evaristo Poetry Prize from the African Poetry Book Fund. Away from the writing desk, she holds an MD from Duke University and a BA from Stanford University and practices as a pediatrician, the kind of biography that reminds you that some of the most important poets are doing entirely other things with their days.

As a 2026 Emerging Voices Fellow, Asomugha will be mentored by Mahogany L. Browne, writer, playwright, organizer, educator, and inaugural Poet-in-Residence at Lincoln Center, whose collection Chrome Valley won the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize. This kind of mentorship pairing is intentional: two women whose work is rooted in community, body, and history.

The Emerging Voices Fellowship provides a virtual five-month immersive mentorship program for early-career writers from communities that are traditionally underrepresented in publishing. The program is committed to cultivating the careers of Black writers, and serves writers who identify as Indigenous, persons of color, LGBTQ+, immigrants, writers with disabilities, and those living outside of urban centers. Fellows receive $1,500, a professional headshot, and a one-year complimentary PEN America membership, alongside creative writing workshops, visits from publishing professionals, and sessions on the business of books.

The fellowship grew out of PEN America Los Angeles’s 1994 forum on writing the immigrant experience and was formally launched in 1996 as a mentorship programme designed to provide professional resources to writers seeking financial and creative support. Thirty years on, it remains one of the more thoughtful pipelines in American literary culture for writers who have not yet had institutional doors opened for them.

Congratulations, Asomugha! Follow her work at chisaraokwu.com and on Instagram @naijabella.