2026 Willa Cather Residency Cohort Announced
The National Willa Cather Center is pleased to announce the members of the fourth cohort of writers of the Willa Cather Writers Residency in Red Cloud, Nebraska. The cohort of five diverse writers will gather October 4-18, 2026. The Willa Cather Residency aims to inspire new work by emergent writers.
Dodie Miller-Gould
Dodie Miller-Gould is a fiction writer whose short stories and poetry have appeared in Tenth Muse, Mantid, and elsewhere. She lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana with her husband and their rescue terriers, Bobo and Jack.
Kathleen Neil
Kathleen Neil is a poet and librarian retired from the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland. Through narratives of memory and reflection, her poems explore the mystery and drama of daily life within a world of upheaval. In this residency, she plans to develop a series of poems highlighting women’s voices – historic, literary and domestic.
Evelyn Lee is a slam poet originally from Toms River, New Jersey. During her time at the Cather Residency, she plans to work on her first book of poetry titled "Deer Season," which will explore themes of girlhood, interpersonal relationships, and power. She is traveling from New Orleans, Louisiana, where she currently lives with her two best friends and cat, Amelia.
Rebecca Egan McCarthy
Rebecca Egan McCarthy is a journalist who primarily covers energy, technology, and the environment. Her work has appeared in The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, The Baffler, and many other outlets. She's a 2026-2027 fellow with the Law and Justice Journalism Project and was previously the 2025-2026 Climate News Reporting Fellow at Grist. She lives in Philadelphia.
Sean Theodore Stewart
Sean Theodore Stewart is a fiction writer from the Sandhills of Nebraska, now writing in Brooklyn. His stories have appeared in journals like Epiphany and The Arkansas International. He holds an MFA from the University of Idaho. His time in Willa Cather’s Red Cloud will be spent at work on a novel set on the Nebraska plains.