Aaron Aceves '20 Receives Early Career Provost Fellowship

The University of Texas at Austin recently announced that alumnus Aaron Aceves '20 will be one of two early career fellows in Creative Writing. The competitive program specifically sought fellows whose work and pedagogical practice "engages with race, ethnicity, and expressive culture." 

According to the English Department at UT Austin's College of Liberal Arts, "A major focus for our creative writing program this year is the study of Race, Ethnicity, and Expressive Culture, and we seek fellows whose fiction, young adult fiction, creative nonfiction, or screenwriting engages with these interests. English looks to build towards a critical mass of diverse faculty taking diverse approaches to creative expression."

Aceves, whose debut novel This is Why They Hate Us will be released by Simon and Schuster in Spring of 2022, certainly qualifies as engaging with those interests. The novel, which is about a bi-sexual Latino teenager who attempts to navigate his romantic life and the prospect of coming out to his religious parents, has already been listed as a Latinx book on the "To Be Read" list on websites like LGBTQReads. 

Aceves will spend his time in this three-year program receiving training and mentorship "in all the different dimensions that make an assistant tenure-track professor successful," including building a competitive writing and teaching portfolio, participating in cross-departmental communities of practice for writing and teaching, and developing a network of scholars and faculty. Aceves will also teach in the Creative Writing Program with a light course load designed to give fellows the time to write and seek publication. 

In addition to the experience, training, and mentorship, early career fellows receive a competitive stipend, funds for relocation, travel, and discretionary spending, and fringe benefits. At the end of the program, fellows are also invited to apply for a tenure-track position at UT Austin with the rank of Assistant Professor of English. 

Aaron H. Aceves is a Mexican-American writer born and raised in East LA. He graduated in 2015 from Harvard College, where he received the Le Baron Russell Briggs Award after being nominated by Jamaica Kincaid, and received his MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. His fiction has appeared in Germ Magazine, Raspa Magazine, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, New Pop Lit, The Acentos Review, jmww, Little Engines, and Epiphany. He currently lives in New York.