MDC’s Miami Book Fair and National Book Foundation Present An Evening With the 5 Under 35 Honorees

MIAMI (Feb. 12, 2026) – Miami Dade College’s (MDC) Miami Book Fair (MBF) will once again host An Evening with the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Honorees, featuring readings and conversations with four exceptional emerging fiction writers at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 19, at Books & Books in Coral Gables. The event is free and open to the public.

Each year, the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 program recognizes five outstanding debut fiction authors selected by past National Book Award winners and honorees. Each writer is under the age of 35 and has published only one novel or short story collection within the last five years.

This year’s program will feature four of the 2025 5 Under 35 honorees: Stacie Shannon Denetsosie (The Missing Morningstar and Other Stories), Megan Howell (Softie), Alexander Sammartino (Last Acts), and Jemimah Wei (The Original Daughter). The evening will include readings and a moderated conversation led by Natalie Green, director of programs and partnerships at the National Book Foundation.

Prior to the main event, honoree Jemimah Wei will lead February’s First Draft, a monthly series of free, informal writing events where community, craft, and rapid-fire creativity meet. The session will take place from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. and will feature a series of free-writing prompts designed as a low-stakes literary social. First Draft is also free and open to the public. RSVP here.

About This Year’s Honorees

Stacie Shannon Denetsosie is a citizen of the Navajo Nation. Her clans are Todích’íí’nii (Bitterwater Clan), born for Naakaii (Mexican Clan). She is the author of The Missing Morningstar and Other Stories, which won a WILLA Literary Award and a Foreword INDIES Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. She is also a co-editor of Beyond the Glittering World: An Anthology of Indigenous Futurisms and Feminisms. Denetsosie earned her MA from Utah State University and her MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Originally from Kayenta, Arizona, she now lives in Northern Utah.

Megan Howell is a Washington, D.C.-based writer. She earned her MFA in fiction from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she received the Jack Salamanca Thesis Award and the Kwiatek Fellowship. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Nashville Review, and The Establishment, among others. Her debut short story collection, Softie, won a gold medal at the 2025 IPPY Book Awards and was shortlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection.

Alexander Sammartino is the author of the debut novel Last Acts, which won the 2025 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction and was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Born in Rhode Island and raised in Arizona, he now lives in Brooklyn. Sammartino earned his MFA in fiction from Syracuse University. His next novel, Gallo, is forthcoming from Scribner.

Jemimah Wei was born and raised in Singapore and is now based between Singapore and the United States. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a Felipe P. De Alba Fellow at Columbia University, where she earned her MFA. Wei has received fellowships and awards from Singapore’s National Arts Council, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Writers in Paradise. In addition to being named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, she was selected as one of Narrative’s “30 Below 30” writers and received the Francine Ringold Award for New Writers. Her fiction has won the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize and appears in Guernica, Narrative, and Nimrod. Her debut novel, The Original Daughter, was published in 2025.

This event is presented in partnership with Books & Books and the National Book Foundation. RSVP here.

 WHAT:            MBF to Host National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Honorees

 WHEN:            Thursday, Feb. 19

6:30 p.m. (First Draft Writing Social)

8 p.m. (Reading and Discussion)

 WHERE:         Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave. Coral Gables, FL 33134

About Miami Book Fair
Founded in 1984 by Miami Dade College and partners, Miami Book Fair engages the community through inclusive, accessible programs that promote reading and support writers year-round. The annual eight-day festival has grown into the largest and most comprehensive community-rooted literary gathering in the United States generating discourse on contemporary literature and current issues of international importance. Throughout the rest of the year, Miami Book Fair responds hosts an ongoing schedule of activities, including The Little Haiti Book Festival; creative writing and publishing workshops; author presentations; reading campaigns; and Read to Learn Books for Free, a partnership with The Children’s Trust that distributes more than 150,000 free books a year to children in Miami-Dade County.  Miami Book Fair programming is made possible through generous support from the State of Florida and the National Endowment for the Arts; City of Miami; Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council; Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; Miami-Dade County Public Schools; Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau; Miami Downtown Development Authority; and Friends of the Fair; as well as many corporate partners. Miami Book Fair: Building community, one reader at a time.

 Miami Book Fair contact: Keneesha Crawford, Marketing & Outreach Events Manager, [email protected]