[PDF version of press release]
TEXAS INSTITUTE OF LETTERS ANNOUNCES RECIPIENT OF JONES FELLOWSHIP
The Texas Institute of Letters announces the recipient of the 2026 Jones Fellowship: ire’ene lara silva.
The Jesse H. Jones Fellowship from the Texas Institute of Letters is aimed at working writers who are at any stage in their careers: emerging, mid-level, or restarting. A writer must demonstrate a commitment to the craft with some record of prior publishing and/or cite specific examples of workshops, mentor programs, or master classes that they have attended. The fellowship consists of a $9,000 award to fund the completion of a literary work of fiction, poetry, or nonfiction for a general audience.
In order to make their decision, the five judges—Rubén Degollado, Michelle García, Nan Cuba, Jay Brandon, and Robin Davidson—reviewed twenty-one applications that included lengthy writing samples. The panel came away impressed by the “talented and deserving writers” whose work they “deeply admired,” a testament to the great diversity and quality of our state’s community of letters.
About the recipient. ire’ne lara silva, 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections, furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, FirstPoems, and the eaters of flowers, which won Gold for the 2025 Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book (ILBA), a comic book, VENDAVAL, and two short story collections, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán, and the light of your body. ire’ne is the recipient of the ILBA 2025 Rising Stars Poetry Award, a 2025 Storyknife Writers Residency, the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction, a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award.
During the TIL Annual Awards Ceremony on April 19, ire’ne will be recognized and will receive the Jones Fellowship Award funds.
The Texas Institute of Letters is a nonprofit Honor Society founded in 1936 to celebrate Texas literature and recognize distinctive literary achievement. The TIL’s elected membership consists of the state’s most respected writers–including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, PEN/Faulkner Award, Man Booker Prize, Academy Award, International Latino Book Award, Americas Award, Lambda Literary Award, MacArthur Fellowship, and Guggenheim Fellowship.
For more information on the TIL or the TIL Annual Awards Ceremony contact David Bowles, president@texasinstituteofletters.org, or visit the TIL website at www.texasinstituteofletters.org.
