by Kimberly Schaye

y the time writer María José Candela ’12 was awarded a Rose Fellowship in 2025, her determination to win the coveted award had started to resemble the type of quest one might read about in an epic poem. “I was super happy to get it because this was my fifth or sixth time trying,” Candela recalls.

Candela, currently a PhD student in Spanish literature at Georgetown University, has shown the same dedication to her writing, which has already benefited from Rose funding. “I’ve used it for traveling, a little bit of research, and also to not teach in the summers,” she says. “Without that teaching load, I have so much time to work on my writing. So that has been amazing, just a relief. When that’s lifted, I can advance so much more quickly.”

And advance she has. Candela recently completed a short-story collection and is deep into her first novel. She has published stories in acclaimed literary magazines such as The Kenyon Review and The Sewanee Review, and her writing is starting to attract notice in the book-publishing world. Shortly after winning the Rose, she was selected as the third-ever Farrar, Straus and Giroux Writing Fellow, which has provided valuable mentorship opportunities, as well as a first-look agreement with the esteemed publisher for her first book-length work. Said FSG President and Publisher Mitzi Angel upon Candela’s selection, “María Jose Candela writes into and against the magical realist tradition—to astonishing effect. Her stories are funny, lively, and poignant; they summon up, with imaginative precision, feelings of dislocation and alienation across geographic and psychic space. FSG is delighted to support her as she embarks on the first steps of a major career.”

Fluent in Spanish, English, and French (with a basic competency in German and Portuguese), Candela is fascinated by language, the written word, and philosophy (her major at Vassar). “I think philosophy adds so much to my writing,” she says. “It teaches you how to read differently. I appreciate writing that is interested in form and voice and lets these elements do their own kind of thinking instead of just telling a story under the guise of objectivity.”

As a college student and developing writer, Candela thought it was more important to inhabit “those spaces that were not necessarily about craft, but about perception, reading deeply, and thinking critically. I think Vassar was amazing for that.”

In her stories, she channels the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, perhaps the most celebrated writer from her native Colombia, and the authors who in turn influenced him: Kafka and Faulkner—“those writers that are just a little more playful with language and who kind of don’t say, ‘This is reality.’ There are always these layers of doubt that undercut their own articulations of the world,” she notes. Candela says her work continues to evolve and that she has already noticed changes in her style since she finished her recent story collection. “I enjoy seeing my writing change in ways that I’m not always conscious of,” she observes. “I’m still figuring it out.”