Brittney Corrigan ’94, event manager at Reed, and Zoë Ballering, senior assistant dean of admission communications and special projects, received fellowships for poetry and fiction, respectively.
By Cara Nixon
February 24, 2025
Literary Arts, a Portland-based nonprofit literary organization, recently announced recipients of the 2025 Oregon Literary Fellowships. Out of 479 applicants, 15 writers were chosen—and two of them are members of the Reed staff, one of whom is also an alumna.
The fellowships are intended to help Oregon writers initiate, develop, or complete literary projects.
Brittney Corrigan ’94, who is the events manager in Conference & Events Planning, received the C. Hamilton Bailey Fellowship for poetry. She is the author of the poetry collections Daughters, Breaking, Navigation, 40 weeks, and most recently, Solastalgia, a collection about climate change. Her recent debut short story collection, The Ghost Town Collectives, won the 2023 Osprey Award for Fiction from Middle Creek Publishing. Brittney studied English as a student at Reed.
“It is humbling and exciting to be recognized in this way by the literary community I've been a part of for over 30 years,” Brittney says. “This fellowship will allow me to focus on my next poetry collection, which is just beginning to take shape.”
Senior Assistant Dean of Admission Communications and Special Projects Zoë Ballering received the Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship for fiction. Her debut collection of stories, There Is Only Us, won the 2022 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. Her stories have also appeared in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Hobart, and Craft.
“I'm elated to be an Oregon Literary Fellow! I'm working on my second collection of stories right now, and it's incredibly heartening to receive this recognition,” Zoë says. “The monetary component means a lot to me, but I'm also excited to meet the other Fellows and get to know a community of stellar Oregon writers.”
Brittney and Zoë, along with the other Oregon Literary Fellowship recipients, will be honored at the 2025 Oregon Book Awards ceremony on April 28.