Past
Grantees

Jessica Beshir is a Mexican-Ethiopian filmmaker. She is interested in cinema that responds to an intuitive process and the forms that emerge from this journey. Her feature debut, Faya Dayi, premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and screened around the world garnering multiple awards including the Truer Than Fiction Award at the Independent Spirits (2022), the Grand Jury Prize & Fipresci Awards at Visions du Reel (2021), the Grand Jury Prize at the Full Frame Film Festival (2021), best Cinematography awards at the ASC (2022), IDA (2021), DOC NYC (2021) and was shortlisted for the Academy Awards (2022). Faya Dayi was released theatrically in North America by Janus Films, broadcast nationally on POV’s 35th season on PBS (2022) and was released in Europe and Latin America by Mubi. Jessica is a 2024 Guggenheim fellow and has been honored with grant support from the Jerome Foundation, Sundance Institute, the Doha Film Institute and NYSCA.

Fellowship Statement

As a filmmaker, I am interested in cinema that is nomadic in nature, a cinema that is liberated from the confines of genre/narrative expectations to create an aesthetic that fluidly moves amidst temporal and sonic spaces, between the physical and the spiritual worlds, invoking the mythical while grounded in socio-political concerns. I am interested in the unique cinematic forms that emerge when intuition is a guiding compass and process is trusted in the creation of stories that look and feel as free and fragmentary as Memory.

During the Fellowship, I will travel to Ethiopia to do archival research and to record oral histories of elders who lived through the Cold War. The vision is to create a poetic work whose aesthetics and thematics are rooted in the historical realities of the present to uncover past histories and the cycles of war that continue to provoke massive exiles.

Anooj Bhandari is an artist creating experimental performance and theater. He believes deeply in art as a process to ask quiet questions publicly. He is an alumnus of EmergeNYC, the Hemispheric Institute’s Fellowship for Emerging Political Performance Artists, the Lighthouse Residency at the BEAM Center, and The Bandung Residency with the Asian American Arts Alliance and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporic Arts. Bhandari is a 2023 MacDowell Fellowship recipient in the Theater Arts. He is also an ensemble member of the New York Neo-Futurists, where he writes, performs, and directs in their weekly show, The Infinite Wrench.

Fellowship Statement

During the Fellowship, I intend to expand on a larger body of work titled A Geometric Proof for Changing the Shape of a Dollar, exploring the intersections between grief, migration, and spirit through the counterfeit dollar. The work will utilize puppetry and multi-media installation to weave together narratives of global end-of-life ritual, mutualism within nature, and histories of geometric tiling, to explore two central questions of counterfeit practice: How will we replicate the shapes we make? And where does the impact of our work begin? I also intend to develop an immersive, mobile puppetry unit that will build site-specific performance around New York City in the aesthetics of a mystical chai stall. I am interested in creating art that extends the future of theater as a significant cultural tool, rather than a future of the “great American theater.”

Born and raised in North Dakota and now residing in Northern Minnesota, Elizabeth Chatelain is an award-winning documentary and narrative filmmaker. Her work focuses on women's perspectives from the rural Midwest. Her documentary short My Sister Sarah won the International Documentary Association’s Award for Best Student Documentary and was a Student Academy Award Finalist. Her films have screened at festivals across the country and the world, including Interfilm Berlin and SXSW. Chatelain’s feature projects have participated in the Berlinale Script Station, the Sundance Institute’s Financing Intensive, the Blacklist/Women in Film Writer's Residency and the Stowe Story Labs. She is an Academy Nicholl Fellowship Semi-Finalist and a Showtime Tony Cox Screenplay Competition Winner. She was awarded the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Climate Storytelling Fellowship in 2024. Chatelain holds an MFA in Film and Video Production from University of Texas, Austin and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU-Tisch.

Fellowship Statement

As a filmmaker born in North Dakota and residing in rural Minnesota, I am passionate about telling stories from the rural Midwest, particularly from a woman’s perspective, with nuance and sensitivity. From the effects of the oil industry in Western North Dakota to the psychological and social intricacies of Minnesota’s farming culture, it is my vision to present the stories of the north—and ultimately other underrepresented areas—to the rest of the country and the world. I am also deeply committed to engaging rural communities in all of my work, collaborating with local artists and performers. I will shoot my debut feature film, Løvset's Manoeuvre, in Hibbing, Minnesota, in collaboration with the communities of the Iron Range. My aim is to tell thought-provoking, relatable stories from these unique areas that will resonate with people everywhere.

Pamela Council is an interdisciplinary artist creating works of veneration and playful catharsis. These multi-sensory dedications to the unsung, including their series Fountains for Black Joy, meticulously process history using dark humor, bright colors, nostalgic smells, and a campy Afro Americana aesthetic. They have created commissions for The Studio Museum in Harlem and VOLTA NY and exhibited at the Aldrich Art Museum, New-York Historical Society, and The New Museum for Contemporary Art. Council has been awarded numerous residencies including MacDowell Colony and ISCP. Council is an alumnus of Columbia University (MFA), and Williams College (BA), which awarded them the 2022 Bicentennial Medal as a distinguished alumna. They are a recipient of the 2017 Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant and a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Fellowship Statement

During my Fellowship, I will continue to create works ranging in scale from miniature to monumental, designing playful art that engages architectural history and supports public and private catharsis. I envision the Fellowship duration as a time when I can both get organized and feel free to experiment, tell stories that may not be the most commercially viable, and build a team to support my vision. I want people to meet at my fountains for reflection, sit on my benches and share gossip, and enjoy interiors filled with freedom-inspiring objects.

Zola Dee is a playwright, screenwriter, and performer whose works are deeply invested in exploring Black Americana, African diasporic religions, and imagining freer worlds for the Black collective body. Her plays include GUNSHOT MEDLEY, Smile, Goddamnit, and Father, Father. Other accomplishments include: 2023 I Am Soul National Black Theater Resident Playwright, Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellow 2022-2023, Playwrights’ Center Many Voices Fellow 2021-2022, Center Theatre Group Writer’s Workshop 2019-2020. Dee is a graduate from California Institute of the Arts with a BFA in acting and a minor in creative writing. She is currently represented by WME and Management 360.

Fellowship Statement

I am currently developing a trilogy of plays set in the South Carolina Lowcountry, exploring the journey of a Black family from Reconstruction to the present day. The story centers a young girl named Presence who witnesses her mother's, already fragile mental health deteriorate after her grandmother dies and the family home is sold. Presence embarks on a literal journey through her family's past. She's determined to unearth the roots of the "sadness" that has plagued this family for generations and put an end to its cycle. This project is deeply intertwined with field research within the Gullah Geechee community. The Fellowship will provide invaluable support in continuing this research and expanding it to Bahia, Brazil, for a different set of plays I am developing. By connecting these narratives across port cities like Salvador and Charleston—spanning continents and time—I aim to showcase not only the resilience and complexities of the diaspora, but also our ever-enduring joy.

Melanie Dyer is a composer, violinist, and trans-disciplinary musician working in creative-improvised music. She is the recipient of awards including the 2024 New York Council on the Arts Support for Artists, the 2023 Herb Alpert Foundation Ragdale Prize, the 2022 Jazz Road/South Arts, and a 2022 and 2019 Chamber Music America award, among many others. Current projects include Incalculable Likelihood, an operetta for 12-piece ensemble (Vision Festival 2024), Siren Xypher Trio, and collaborations with several NY-based musicians. She convenes the improvising string/rhythm collective WeFreeStrings, Dyer has performed and recorded with the Sun Ra Arkestra under Marshall Allen; Tomeka Reid's Stringtet; and on William Parker’s projects. Her appearances include Vision Festival, Donaueschingen Musiktage, Festival Sons d’hiver, and Lincoln Center Outdoors, and many more.

Fellowship Statement

Creative risk and expanding my vocabulary as a violist, composer, and trans-disciplinary musician will feed me over the next three years. My immediate project is to expand and stage Incalculable Likelihood at Mabou Mines black box experimental theater in December 2025. Over the next two years, I envision studying approaches to composition marginally familiar to me (privately), composing for new and existing ensembles, becoming a better improviser and violist, co-producing two trio recordings, and pursuing a sound project involving mass spectrometry. I live for new ideas. The Fellowship will support plans, purposes, and pursuits that inhabit and excite me. The Fellowship also represents the tangible possibility of generating new work, and being in conversation with creative thinkers and the participating public. 

Tommy Franklin is a filmmaker, writer, producer, and creator of Weapon of Choice Podcast. He was a founding board member of All Square, is a founding board member of Ostara Initiative, and is a communications consultant at the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. His documentary You Don’t Know My Name (in production) has received support from Sundance, ITVS, Firelight Media, The Marshall Project, The Just Trust, Jerome Foundation, Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, Vital Projects Fund, and others. As of late, Franklin has developed his artistic practice during fellowships with Film Independent, CNN, Duke University Center for Documentary Studies, and others. Franklin’s one hour drama pilot Intrepid was a finalist for 2021’s Sundance Episodic Lab, and he was a 2022 Sundance BIPOC Mentorship Program Mentee. A double survivor of incarceration (born in prison and formerly incarcerated), he creatively reimagines power structures, focusing on Black liberation. He’s sure he wants to do this.

Fellowship Statement

My artistic growth requires ongoing self-reflection, as well as interrogating society and my role in it. I’m rooted in principles of creativity that come from lived experience, and I look forward to engaging and collaborating with artists who don’t run away from challenging realities we face in the world. The way formerly incarcerated people are stigmatized in society extends to the Hollywood ecosystem. We are seen as one-dimensional, “broken” with blatant character flaws and therefore not considered to be integral and valued in the storytelling process from the ground up, as if with our lived experience we aren’t the experts on the nuances within the justice-impacted universe. I spent three years in prison, locked away in five different correctional facilities. I have suffered deep pain and loss having lived through barriers connected to mass incarceration; the only journey toward healing for me is unfolding layers of truth through creative endeavors.

Roshan Ganu is a multimedia artist originally from Goa-India, currently based in Minneapolis. She works at the intersection of moving image collage, projection, and non-linear notions of space and time. Ganu is an awardee of the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP) by the Minneapolis Institute of Art for her exhibition titled रातराणी: The Night Blooming Jasmine. She received the MCAD-Jerome Early Career Award in 2022 and was an artist in residence at Out of the Circle residency in Cairo, Egypt in 2023. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Medrar For Contemporary Art in Cairo- Egypt, MdW Art Fair in Chicago, Rochester Art Center, and Soo Visual Art Center in Minnesota, among others. Publications such as Brooklyn Rail, Star Tribune, Minnpost, MNArtists-Walker Art Center, and Minnesota Public Radio have written about her work with features, articles, and interviews. Ganu currently teaches at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and at Hamline University.

Fellowship Statement

During the Fellowship, I intend to use the video medium to explore a familiar place: the Konkan region which lies along the west coast of India. This is where I grew up, as did the past few generations of my family. As a foreigner in Minneapolis and a local in the Konkan belt, I am curious about the aesthetic that will emerge from this relationship. My work plays with narrative in visual layers that reappear from one body of work to another. I am pursuing an archive of this unique visual vocabulary via the myriad languages and places that build my identity, especially the Marathi language. As a moving image artist, my transdisciplinary installations invoke each aspect of our consciousness: the sensorial, emotional, physical, spiritual, the awake, as well as the sleeping. An immersive space activates this multi-modal engagement, wherein intricately layered video, narrative, sound, color, light, and texture makes the work accessible to a broad spectrum of audiences.

Caroline Garcia is a transpacific, interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She works across performance, moving image, and installation through a hybridized aesthetic of cross-cultural movement, embodied research, and new media. Her practice weaves together ethnotraditional forms of knowledge including botany, poetry, dance, and ceramics with digital technologies such as green screening, robotics, motion capture, extended realities (AR/VR), and 3D processes. Garcia is a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow: Digital/Electronic Arts, New York Artadia Awardee, Franklin Furnace Fund recipient, and the American Australian Association’s AUSART Fellow. She has presented work at The SHED, Lincoln Center, Creative Time Summit X and HQ, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney Opera House, Manila Biennale, among others. Caroline is currently an A.I.R. Gallery Fellow and was formerly in residence at the EMPAC, MASS MoCA, ISCP, Pioneer Works, Recess, Alfred IEA, and LMCC’s Workspace program.

Fellowship Statement

My artistic research inquiries create unique constellations that intersect the past, present, and future. Using found footage, archives, and artifacts, I digitally sample popular culture and colonial imagery to critically re-appropriate problematic narratives of cultural representation. I am committed to centering Indigenous protocol and addressing diasporic ontologies and its privileges. I experiment with new media in order to outmaneuver forces of oppression. I utilize digital technologies as tools to transmit gestures and rituals into disembodied landscapes. I welcome the transgressive potency of rage and refusal to render critical awareness for communities confronting the status quo in politics, culture, history, and other areas of life. By initiating my own recuperation of violence, I (co)generate gateways for both the self and collective to engage with systemic themes of identity, immigration, and safety.

Wendell Gray II is a Brooklyn-based choreographer, dancer, and educator. Raised in Atlanta, GA, in an immersive, multidisciplinary arts environment, he studied dance, music, and theater. Since relocating to New York, Gray’s choreographic works have been showcased at venues such as Danspace Project, PAGEANT, Coffey Street Studios, Kinosaito Arts Center, Gibney Dance, and Movement Research at Judson Church, among others. Gray is a 2024-2025 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and has additionally been supported by residency programs, including the Sightlines Dance Festival (2023), STUFFED Artist-in-Residence at Judson Church (2021), Work Up 6.0 Artist at Gibney (2020), and Chez Bushwick (2017). His artistic journey has led him to work with choreographers/ artists such as Miguel Gutierrez, Tere O’Connor, Juliana May, Joanna Kotze, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Pavel Zustiak, and Kevin Beasley, among others. He graduated from the University of the Arts with a BFA in Dance under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield.

Fellowship Statement

I make dances that are episodic and rhythmic, and that juggle various performative and qualitative intentions. I look to highlight both the public nature of performance and the private essence of being human. I focus on movement, organizing it into different choreographic structures while layering this with theatrical elements such as props and texts. I find it radical to be many things at once, both absorbing and transcending my identity. I use my formal dance training as a springboard for experimentation, both poking at the western throughlines while also navigating the tropes and signifiers within it. My work asks you to listen and form curiosities, to move into the unknown, the unanswerable, and the felt. I’m in the early stages of a new group work. It is a continuation of my most previous piece in the port’s mouth which dealt with the fantasies around the unknown parts of my lineage.

Dickie Drew Hearts is a Deaf, gay, multiracial actor and filmmaker dedicated to amplifying representation for Deaf, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC communities by showcasing American Sign Language onscreen. He recently created, wrote, directed, and co-starred in the Deaf/disabled-centric, LGBTQ+ romcom mini-series Passengers: New York City, which is now entering post-production. This series evolved from his short film Passengers, which won the 2015 Best Filmmaker award at the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge, earning him mentorship with Oscar-winning Director Peter Farrelly. In 2016, he won Project Greenlight’s LGBTQ "See Yourself" contest with his pitch Save The World, leading to a development deal with Adaptive Studios and GLAAD. Hearts also won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the 2017 AT&T Create-A-Thon for The Deaf vs The Dead, before Deaf characters first appeared on AMC’s The Walking Dead. Hearts also is a television and stage actor, and he received an Obie Award in 2024 and a Lucille Lortel nomination for The Public Theater’s Dark Disabled Stories. Hearts is the recipient of the 2021 Sundance Institute’s Uprise Grant and the 2022 Ford and Mellon Foundations Disability Futures Fellows Grant.

Fellowship Statement

I am passionate about bringing more visibility to Deaf, LGBTQ, and American Sign Language stories in scripted narratives. I believe these stories deserve to be told and am committed to creating content that entertains while highlighting Deaf and disabled experiences. With this Fellowship, I plan to produce a mini-series, with the goal of expanding it into bigger projects or having it picked up as a network TV show. I am ready to push boundaries and tell more cinematic stories that amplify disabled, queer, and BIPOC voices.

Orlando Hernández is a choreographer, tap dancer, and theater-maker based in NYC. He has presented his work at New York Live Arts, On the Boards, Joe’s Pub, Brown University, the Judson Church, and La Casa Ruth Hernández Torres. He was a 2022-23 Fresh Tracks Artist at New York Live Arts, a 2023 Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Performance Research, and has received grants and residencies from the New England Foundation for the Arts, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, Yaddo, the CUNY Dance Initiative, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, and Snug Harbor. Hernández holds a B.A. in English from Yale University. He is a member of the tap dance and music companies Music From the Sole, Subject:Matter, and Michela Marino Lerman's Love Movement. His play La Broa’ (Broad Street) premiered in 2024 at Trinity Repertory Company.

Fellowship Statement

In my current work, tap dance conspires/collides with text, devised theater, mask-work, and live music to tell stories of metamorphosis and ecstasy. In particular I have been digging into Indigenous histories of the Caribbean from my perspective in the Puerto Rican diaspora. I strive to honor my tap dance teachers and the roots of this transformative Black American art form. I believe rhythm can be a guiding force and tool for understanding power, geography, and processes of cultural formation.

Blossom Johnson is a Diné playwright, dramaturg, and screenwriter. She is Yé'ii Dine'é Táchii'nii, and her maternal grandfather is Deeshchíí'nii. She was awarded a residency with Willowtail Springs in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Additionally, she has been awarded AlterTheater Ensemble's AlterLab 2020-21, the 2022 First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellowship, 2022 Netflix Animation Foundations Program Mentee, La Lengua/ AlterTheater Ensemble's Decolonization Stories Commission 2022, The Playwrights' Center 2022-2023 Jerome Fellowship, and the Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Support for Individuals for the 2023 and 2024 fiscal year. Her play, Diné Nishłį (i am a sacred being), Or A Boarding School Play, made the Kilroys 2023 Web list, and had a World Premiere with Bag&Baggage Productions and Native Theater Project. Johnson holds an MFA in Dramaturgy from Columbia University and a BA in Theatre from Arizona State University.

Fellowship Statement

I am honored to be a 2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, and I am excited to continue to serve my community as a storyteller. During my Fellowship I will conduct research, learn, and continue to write a new play and musical that centers Diné experiences. I want to strengthen my community by leaning into my culture, history and language. By doing this I can disrupt the dominant American Theatrical narrative that often does not highlight, engage and empower Native people and their stories. This little rez girl is full of joy, hope and possibilities. Axhéhéé (Thank you)!!

JuCoby Johnson (he/him) is a New York-based playwright, actor, and screenwriter originally from Jacksonville, FL. His plays include How It's Gon Be (Echo Theater, 2023; Underdog Theater, 2019), ...but you could've held my hand (CATCO, 2022; O'Neill NPC Summer Season, 2022), 5 (Jungle Theater, 2023; O'Neill NPC Summer Season, 2022; Seven Devils Finalist), Heritage (International Black Theater Festival, 2024); I'll Be Seeing You Again (Jungle Serial Audio Series, 2021) and Revelations (Playing On Air, 2021). He is the recipient of the 2020 McKnight Fellowship, was a member of the 2022 Sony Pictures Television Diverse Writers Program, and a member of the inaugural Artist Cohort at The Jungle Theater. Johnson has been seen onstage at The Guthrie Theater, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, The Jungle Theater, Theater Latté Da, Theater Mu, Ten Thousand Things Theatre Company, and many more. He is currently participating in The Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrights Program.

Fellowship Statement

I write poetic, lyrical, magical love stories centered around Black people and Black communities. I try to conjure the people I grew up with, people who never imagined they would see themselves in a play, and make their existence as beautiful, as epic, and as complex as any piece of Shakespeare or Greek literature. I'm particularly fascinated by complicated relationships and by the struggle to figure out how to love each other better. My greatest dream is that a young Black person sees my work and feels seen, heard, and less alone in the world.

Kengchakaj Kengkarnka is a Thai diaspora, Bangkok-born, Lenapehoking-based artist, pianist, improviser, and synthesist. His practice engages with composing and improvising sounds from personal experience that draw inspiration from ancestral soundscapes, knowledge, and modes of collaboration and expression rooted in Southeast Asian tradition and lineage. His medium of expression spans acoustic piano, electronics, Southeast Asian retune analog synthesizer, multichannel spatial audio, and live coding—a practice of writing and executing code in real-time—utilizing technologies to produce a multisensory live performance. Kengkarnka is a Manhattan School of Music (MM) graduate, a Fulbright Scholarship recipient, and a Gold Award Lumen Prize winner. He is a Collider Fellow and a Y11 NEW INC member. His projects have received development funds and support from the Lincoln Center, NEW INC, Queens Council on the Arts, City Artist Corps, Rhizome, Processing Foundation, CultureHub, Babycastles, Eyebeam, and Institute for Electronic Arts. He is one-half of elekhlekha อีเหละเขละขละ, a collaborative duo with interdisciplinary media artist, Nitcha Tothong.

Fellowship Statement

With the Fellowship, I plan to travel through Southeast Asia to learn from elders, teachers, and traditional practitioners while continuing my study with Kru Amp, a Thai traditional music practitioner in the U.S. When researching Southeast Asia's diverse sound cultures, I often encounter a challenging political landscape marked by the historical silencing of sound cultures and activists’ voices. Through my work, I aspire to honor these stories and foster a deeper understanding of these critical issues, ensuring that the unheard voices of the past and present resonate in our collective future. I’m also committed to continuing the work of decolonizing my approach by unlearning and relearning through meaningful research in my artistic practice. This involves investigating recent and ancient history, actively listening, and reinterpreting wisdom, practices, and systems offered by ancestral and heritage: to hack contemporary tools, foster experimentation, and explore alternative futures rooted in care.

Mo Kong is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher currently residing in NYC. Their work usually takes the form of large-scale installations involving scientific research and multiple journalistic perspectives. Kong challenges key issues of the day using complex narratives that bring together the past and the present. They have had solo exhibitions at Queens Museum, Smack Mellon, CUE Art Foundation, Cuchifritos Gallery, Artericambi Gallery (Verona), and Gertrude Gallery. They also received fellowships and residencies from Sharpe Walentas, Macdowell Colony, Skowhegan, Triangle Art Association, The Drawing Center, City Artists Crops Grant, Mass MoCA Studio, Vermont Studio Center, Lighthouse Works, and Artists Alliance LES Studio Program. Kong’s work has been written about in Hyperallergic, Artforum, Art in America, Cultured magazine, Artnet, Bomb magazine, Artpapers, CoBo Social, Wall Street International, SFMoMA Public Knowledge, and more. They received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Fellowship Statement

My work reflects my long-standing interest in the natural sciences, uses a self-research process, and accounts for our position in complex historical and social events. The focus of my work revolves around "Slowbalization"—the opposite of globalization—which is characterized by xenophobia, economic isolation, and environmental collapse. The work explores the effects of these phenomena on the daily life of immigrants. I plan to continue working on my current series called Personal Ark®, which envisions this Asian immigrant-owned survival company and showcases the brand's apocalypse survival technology through site-specific installations. The series combines historical research, architecture, performance, cutting-edge technology, and biomaterials to reimagine Asian futurism and Asian pessimism. Through the lens of technological orientalism and olfactory orientalism, my works aims to help the Asian diaspora to navigate and survive the apocalypse.

Charmaine Lee (b. 1991) is an Australian composer and vocalist based in New York City. Using the voice, feedback, and live processing, Lee’s practice is primarily concerned with risk-taking, playfulness, and improvisation. As a composer, Lee has been commissioned by leading institutions including Kronos Quartet and International Contemporary Ensemble. She is an Emergent Ventures winner (2024), an Artist-in-Residence at ISSUE Project Room (2019), and a Van Lier Fellow at Roulette (2021). Her long-standing collaborators include Conrad Tao and Ikue Mori (MacArthur Fellow). Lee frequently guest lectures on building a personal language and creative agency at undergraduate and graduate-level composition programs around the country. She serves on the Artistic Advisory Council of ISSUE Project Room and runs a record label, Kou Records, dedicated to pioneering artists in music and sound.

Fellowship Statement

During the Fellowship, I plan to hone my technical and conceptual approaches to the voice, body, and technology while exploring my use of feedback, recording techniques, and thematic ideas for film and other mediums. Inspired by Foley artists, I am developing a “cinema in sound” concept using a variety of compositional techniques to create new temporal and sonic textures. This exploration will be documented in a series of self-released projects under my new label, Kou Records. My goal is to activate a productive creative community through new relationships with artists, illustrators, engineers, and distributors. In addition, I will continue to expand my live practice, including embarking on a 50-state self-organized tour around the U.S. in the fall of 2025.

Nancy Ma is a first-generation performer, playwright, and filmmaker from Chinatown, New York City. Her solo show, Home, premiered with The Latino Theater Company in Los Angeles, and has been performed at schools and festivals around the country. She has worked with Pan Asian Repertory Theater, Ojai Playwrights, and UTR/The Public, and been awarded residencies with The National Arts Club, The New Harmony Project, The Museum of Chinese in America, and Fresh Ground Pepper. Most recently, her short documentary 有一天你不在 One Day You are Not Here, wrapped the festival circuit. Ma is also the co-founder of Max2 Film Festival, a two-minute film festival focused on experimentation and community. She has taught with The Brooklyn Arts Council, Young Storytellers and Built4Collapse, and currently facilitates storytelling workshops with The Moth.

Fellowship Statement

My work is inspired by my identity as a first generation Asian American woman who was raised in a working class immigrant environment. This means processing a lot of buried feelings, doing the most to prove being female is enough, and laughing and crying loud enough to make up for the silence and survival in my family. I explore what home feels like, and that often means I revisit painful and unprocessed memories of people and places. I am currently working on Sweatshop Melody, a musical that follows a group of immigrant women who work at a garment factory; and This Body was Made for Bleeding, an experimental multimedia multilingual theater piece about the blessings and burdens of the female body. I aspire to make spaces that facilitate collective healing and difficult conversations.

Liana Mack (she/hers) is a writer, born and raised in the Bronx, New York. Her poetry and erotica has been published in Hobart, Hunger Mountain Review, Sarka, Triangle House Review, Dream Boy Book Club, dirt child, and more. She is a former lifestyle writer at The Cut (New York Magazine) and Heroine (Grailed). Her research and writing on the plaçage system has been recognized by the Edith Wharton/Straw Dog Writer’s Residency at The Mount in Lennox, MA and Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL. Mack has also been supported extensively in her writing by international residencies including Arteles (Hämeenkyrö, Finland), Metropolitan Fukujusou (Kyoto, Japan), and Gullkistan (Laurgvatn, Iceland). She is of Black, Wesort, and Swedish descent. Mack has a BS in Visual Art from the School of Art + Design at Purchase College and studied writing under Elaine Kahn, Eileen Myles, and Cynthia Cruz.

Fellowship Statement

I write sexy, slippery fairytales starring the subtle magic and actual monsters that menace real life. My work warps the boundaries of arousal and disgust, hunger and gluttony, romance and obscenity. It’s escapist, but never without consequences. It’s trashy and awake. It’s rancid, lush, and shameless. The next several years will be an especially antagonistic time to be a woman writing openly about sex, power, and sickness, which makes holding the line all the more urgent. I am so beyond honored to be supported by this Fellowship as I generate new work.

Aurora Masum-Javed is a poet and educator. A former public school teacher, she received an MFA in Poetry from Cornell. A recent Philip Roth Resident and Hub City Writer in Residence, she has received fellowships from places such as Tin House, MacDowell, Millay Arts, and others. Her work can be found in various journals, including Nimrod, Black Warrior Review, Aster(ix), Winter Tangerine, Frontier, Jaggery, and Callaloo. Masum-Javed was a 2023–24 Loft Mentor Series Fellow and 2024 Civitella Ranieri Writing Fellow. She has also received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, Caldera Arts, Hub City, Vermont Studio. She currently resides in Minnesota where she teaches at Macalester College and is finishing her first book.

Fellowship Statement

I am drafting and redrafting my first collection of poems, which at its heart questions: What does it mean to daughter? Each poem enters the question through a different door, untangling it through a new form. I've found that every door leads to another, and that the relationship and power systems within a home often mirror those of society. Perhaps the repair work of a family can reflect something back to us about transforming society. During the Fellowship, I will work on my second book, still a seedling. This new work will be a speculative, epistolary novel in verse—involving letters between a prophetic great-grandmother and her grandchild, both living on the same commune generations apart.