Announcing the Winner of the 2019 Working Class Writers Grant

The Speculative Literature Foundation is pleased to announce that Carrie Callahan is the winner of the 2020 Working Class Writers Grant.

Callahan received the grant for her short story “The Zombie in the Yard.” She is also the recipient of a 2019 Writers of the Future Award for her short story “Dirt Road Magic,” which appears in Writers of the Future Volume 35.

Callahan has described her writing as Dirt Spec, or speculative fiction about people who are economically disadvantaged, inspired by her own background. She says that she “strives to portray these people with nuance even amid space wars, zombie invasions, and magical school graduations.”

The SLF Working Class Writers grants are awarded annually, since 2013, to working class, blue-collar, poor, and homeless writers of speculative fiction. These writers have been historically underrepresented in speculative fiction, due to the financial barriers which have made it much harder for them to have access to the writing world. Such lack of access might include an inability to attend conventions, to purchase a computer, to buy books, to attend college or high school, or to have the time to write.