María José Candela

María José Candela is a writer from Colombia. Selected as the runner-up of the 2022 Sewanee Review Fiction Prize and the winner of the 2020 Indiana Review Fiction Prize, her fiction has also appeared in the Kenyon Review. Her nonfiction has been published by Roxane Gay. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Vassar College and an M.F.A. in Fiction from Florida State University, and is currently a PhD student in Spanish Literature at Georgetown University. She was selected as the 2025 Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (FSG) Writing Fellow. She is also a recipient of Vassar’s W. K. Rose Fellowship in the Creative Arts.