Writing

Zen Ren is a writer published/forthcoming in New England Review, Electric Lit, swamp pink, Nimrod, Boulevard, Curbed, and others.

Fiction recognitions include the PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship for their novel-in-progress, winner of Nimrod’s New Writer Award, and finalist for Glimmer Train’s contest.

Poetry recognitions include winner for Sine Theta’s contest, recognition for New Letters’ Patricia Cleary Award/Nimrod’s New Writer Award/Epiphany Zine’s Fresh Voices Fellowship, and a Pushcart nomination.

Zen Ren, writer, sits in a park wearing a green shirt and black-and-white pants with a gray fabric backdrop to the left.

Current work

Zen is working on their first novel (working title EXHIBITION), which is literary speculative fiction about two android friends and their rivalry from finishing school, fame, and illness. It explores the destructive and creative power of memory and how we construct our identities through the stories we narrate to each other. An excerpt of EXHIBITION won a PEN America 2023 Emerging Voices Fellowship for fiction.

FICTION AND ESSAYS

Other opportunities and awards

  • PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship 2023 - EXHIBITION excerpt

  • Porches’ Nancy Zafris Fellowship 2023 - “Content Violation”

  • Finalist for One Story’s Adina-Talve Goodman Fellowship 2023 - EXHIBITION excerpt

  • Finalist for Glimmer Train’s Contest 2015 - “Book of our Dirt”

  • Language, Please (Google News Initiative x Vox Media) - internal board member, helped review guidelines for LGBTQ issues (explore here)

Workshops and residencies

  • Kenyon Review winter 2023

  • Anaphora Arts residency 2023

Publications

  • “Things we discovered .01 cm apart from each other” - New England Review, nonfiction, forthcoming 2024

  • “Content Violation” - Nimrod, Winner of the Francine Ringold Award for New Writers, fiction, 2024 (preview)

  • "I give my brother the talk” - swamp pink, nonfiction, 2024

  • “The month we became preppers” - Gigantic Sequins issue #15, Fiction contest finalist, 2024 (print)

  • “My dog would like a word” - Boulevard, nonfiction, 2024

  • “Looking for a home amid coronavirus” - Curbed, nonfiction, 2020

  • “Slanted Girl” - Asia Literary Review, short story (print)

POETRY

Other opportunities and awards

  • Finalist for Epiphany Magazine Fresh Voices Fellowship 2023, “Ampersand” and other poems

  • Finalist for New Letters’ Patricia Cleary Award 2023, “Ampersand” and other poems

Workshops and residencies

  • Kenyon Review summer 2024

  • Lambda Literary summer 2024

Publications