Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award grants

The Iceland Writers Retreat offers financial support to a select number of talented writers. It is the generosity of IWR alumni and friends that makes these grants possible. The Alumni Award program began in 2016 and furthers our aim of bringing together writers from all over the world.

If our summer fundraising campaign is successful, the application window for IWR 2027 will open in the fall.

Read below to learn about the IWR 2026 winners.

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How to Support the Award Fundraiser

The more funds we have, the more opportunities we can create. To contribute to the 2027 Alumni Award fund:

5.000 ISK
10.000 ISK
30.000 ISK
60.000 ISK
125.000 ISK
300.000 ISK

To donate a custom amount, please reach out to iwr@icelandwritersretreat.com. Thank you for your generosity!

Who can apply?

Candidates must be age 18 or older by the start date of the retreat. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds and levels of writing experience. Family members of the judges and past IWR participants are not eligible to apply. 

Applicants will be asked to provide:

  • A statement of impact on why you are applying for the award
  • A maximum 1,000 word creative writing sample (prose: fiction, non-fiction, or memoir)
  • Two references (attached as pdfs to the application)
  • An acknowledgment of financial need

What does the award cover?

Entrants can apply for either full or partial funding.

Full funding covers one standard participant fee, four nights accommodation in Reykjavík (location may not be the retreat hotel), and round-trip flights to Iceland.

Partial funding covers the standard participant fee only.

Note: We receive more applications for full funding. Please ensure that you apply for the category most suitable for you. 

The award does not include airport transfers, travel insurance, travel visas*, or incidentals or meals not listed in the itinerary.

*We are not responsible for issuing travel visas, however, we will provide required supporting letters.

How are recipients chosen?

The recipients are chosen based primarily on two factors:

  1. The potential they demonstrate as a writer.

  2. Their need for financial support to be able to attend.

Applications will be reviewed by a team of IWR alumni. The IWR founding directors will make the final award recipient selections. 

Tips for applying

The awards are very competitive. To increase your chances of being selected, please follow the application instructions carefully:

  • Incomplete applications will not be considered.
  • It is not possible to make changes to your application once it has been submitted.
  • Application fee: We cannot make exceptions to the fee.
  • Financial need: This is a difficult yet important factor to consider for this award. Please be as honest as you can in explaining why this event is beyond your means without support. To qualify for full funding, you must demonstrate that you are unable to afford the cost of flights to Iceland and accommodation. You will be asked whether you have sought additional funding—we’d like to see if you have taken initiative in terms of thinking broadly for ways in which you can attend.
  • Your background: We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and with all levels of writing experience. While the quality of your writing is what is most important, we rank applications highly from people who have not had the opportunity to attend many writing retreats or to develop their writing in other ways. 
  • Statement of impact: In your statement of impact, tell us why this particular event and faculty have captured your interest. 
  • References: References should be written by people who are familiar with the role that writing plays in your life and who are not family members. We give higher marks for references that have been written specifically for this event. The references must be submitted with your application form. We cannot accept references sent via email.
Alumni Award map

IWR 2026 Alumni Award recipients

Alumni Award winner Obejoyful Lynd

Obejoyful Lynd

At four, Obe drew pages of squiggles and read them as stories for her mother. Eight-year-old Obe and her best friend invented a new language. The 87-page novella she handwrote at 13, however, was never published, not even in English.

She followed a circuitous path of inquiry, past Nursing school (not a fit) to writing technical manuals in the US Air Force, then for NASA and the European Space Agency. It was her fervent wish to work off-planet, but a month in Antarctica was as close as she got. Visiting from projects in Munich or the Namib, she was always met with a niece demanding stories invented on the fly.

Obe loves public speaking and employs story in her astronomy lectures at the local observatory. With every adventure came private writing, a blog, a short story in a drawer, thick airmail letters.

She finally embraces writing long fiction as her lifetime calling. She’s especially interested in magical realism.

As a disabled veteran, she is particularly grateful for the generosity of the IWR scholarship program. This award has granted her an opportunity to pursue, in a structured way, what she’s dreamt of doing since she was four.

Alumni Award winner Clara Savelli

Clara Savelli

Clara Savelli is a Brazilian author from Rio de Janeiro who has been writing since childhood and first found her readership online as a teenager. As she began sharing her stories on digital platforms, she built a devoted community of readers who continue to follow her work. Her novels and short fiction have since surpassed 5 million digital reads, and her writing is known for its emotional resonance, warmth, and nuanced portrayals of relationships and the fragile transitions of young adulthood. Clara is published in Brazil by Intrínseca — one of the country’s leading publishing houses and the home of major international bestsellers such as Twilight, Love & Gelato, and The Fault in Our Stars.

Although Clara is best known for her Portuguese-language books — including As Férias da Minha Vida, Acampamento de Inverno para Músicos (Nem Tão) Talentosos, Mocassins e All Stars, and Tiete! — readers can also experience her work (and her love for Christmas) through her short story Christmas Elf, available in English translation. Her literary career has received significant recognition. She won the Paulo Britto Literature Prize in Prose (2011), earned an Honorable Mention in the International Vicente Cardoso Short Story Competition (2012), and is a three-time recipient of the Wattys Award (2015, 2016, 2017), among others.

Alongside her creative work, Clara holds degrees in International Relations and Law and has completed a Master’s in Ethics and Political Philosophy. Throughout her academic trajectory, all her major research projects — from undergraduate theses to her dissertation — have explored the intersections between literature, ethics, and human experience. She lives in Brazil with her husband and Fred, her rescue dog who keeps her company through every new chapter.

Alumni Award winner Mhembeuter Jeremiah Orhemba

Mhembeuter Jeremiah Orhemba

Mhembeuter Jeremiah Orhemba is Tiv and Nigerian. Somewhere in the pulse where memory stings and softens, his ponderance has taken root in Lolwe, Tahoma Literary Review, Chestnut Review, and soon in Evergreen Review. His work has been recognized by the SEVHAGE Prize for Creative Non-Fiction and the ALITFEST short story prize.

He has served as Custodian for The Writers’ Community at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and worked as Assistant editor for The Muse Journal No. 51. Jeremiah is an alumnus of the Voodoonauts 2024 and CANEX 2024 Writers’ Workshops, where he learned under writers like Zukiswa Wanner, Hawa Jande Golakai, Richard Ali, and Eghosa Imasuen.

Alumni Award winner Liu Biyuan

Liu Biyuan

Biyuan Liu is a freelance reporter, writer and college lecturer, focusing on landscape studies, interactive narratives and transmedia storytelling. Upon graduating from Wuhan University, she advanced her studies with a Master of Arts in Literary Studies at KU Leuven. From 2012 to 2015, she worked at Phoenix TV as a correspondent covering the European Union, where she engaged in diverse innovative journalistic endeavors.Since entering the new media industry in 2015, she has also partnered with a theater company on creative projects in Shanghai.

In 2024, in memory of her grandmothers, she launched her ongoing project that traces the lives of several generations of women in her hometown, Jingzhou, a historic city on the Yangtze River and home to the college where she now teaches. Drawing inspiration from authors like Calvino, Knausgaard, Chi Zijian and Eun-young Choi, and enriched by her European experiences, she intertwines the city’s landscapes with the transgenerational memories of its women.

Currently, she co-founded KACA—an experimental multimedia magazine documenting diverse lifestyles through essays,exhibitions and graphic narratives,while hosting an educational podcast featuring interviews with entrepreneurs and professionals alongside her students.

2026 contributors

We are able to offer full and partial grants to the 2026 retreat thanks to the generosity of our founders, Eliza Reid and Erica Green, as well as the following friends and alumni of the Iceland Writers Retreat:

Karen Redfearn, Bashir Bashir, Peggy Newell, Gray Taylor, Rick Theiss, Lisa Morriss-Andrews, Ghislaine Patthey, Chloe Johnson, Cathy Raphael, Lisa Pallatroni, Elizabeth Dowd, Laurie Moy, Molly Arnn, Ian Gunn, Janet Perkins-Howland, Sólveig Ólafsdóttir, Bill Fite, Sarah Willett, Edward McSweegan, Marie Glenn, Lindsay Nash, Sue-Lyn Erbeck, Allison Reid, Edna McNamara, Gay Inskeep, Lisa Ochowycz, Sara Letourneau, Ashleigh Bugg, Alexandra Yingst, Rita Mullin, Andrea Thomas, Emily Hampson, Rhonda Owen, Joy Nash, Georgina Dark, Arani Kajenthira, Elizabeth Pentland, Kathleen McCleary, Iain Reid, Danny Ramadan

Previous winners

2025: H.B. Asari, Efemia Chela, Catherine Dowling, Julie Noble, John Pucay, Aizhan Yesbolatova

2024: Marko Bogdanović, Georgina Dark, Monica Drake, Zehra Imam, Sandra Jackson-Opoku

2023: April Dobbins (United States / Iceland); Lisa Guenther (Canada); Tochukwu Okafor (Nigeria)

2020: Chelsie Bryant (United States; attended in 2022); Abak Hussain (Bangladesh; attended in 2023); Okechi Okeke (Nigeria; attended in 2023); Jo McClelland Phillips (Canada / Australia; attended in 2022); Chuck D. Smith (Philippines; attended in 2023); Michelle Walshe (Ireland; attended in 2022)

2019: Lucy Grace (UK); Daniel Musgrave (United States); Lola Opatayo (Nigeria); Jonaki Ray (India); Carien Smith (South Africa)

2018: Fatin Abbas (Sudan / United States); Michael Agugom (Nigeria); Puja Changoiwala (India); Julia Duin (United States); Nora Shychuk (United States)

2017: Akvile Buitvydaite (Lithuania / Denmark); Peter Ngila (Kenya), Nathan Ramsden (UK); Victor Yang (United States)

2016: Megan Ross (South Africa); April Wolfe (United States)