Past
Grantees

Camille Rankine is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants. Her first book of poetry, Incorrect Merciful Impulses, was published in 2016 by Copper Canyon Press, and her chapbook, Slow Dance with Trip Wire, was selected by Cornelius Eady for the Poetry Society of America's 2010 New York Chapbook Fellowship. She is the recipient of a 2010 "Discovery"/Boston Review Poetry Prize, and fellowships from MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her poetry has appeared in Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, The New Yorker, The New York Times, A Public Space, Tin House, and elsewhere. She serves as president of the board of The Poetry Project, co-chairs the Brooklyn Book Festival Poetry Committee, and is a visiting assistant professor at The New School.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed (b. 1985) is a learner. As a learner, Rasheed grapples with the poetics, politics, and pleasures of the unfinished and uncontained. She is invested in Black storytelling technologies that invite us to consider ways of [un]learning and [un]knowing that are interdisciplinary, interspecies, and interstellar. Rasheed works across an ecosystem of iterative and provisional projects. These projects include sprawling, architecturally-scaled Xerox-based collages; large-scale text banner installations; publications; digital archives; lecture-performances; library interventions; poems/poetic gestures; and other forms yet to be determined.

Rasheed has had national and international solo exhibitions and projects at the New Museum, NY (two-person); Transmissions Gallery, Glasgow, UK; Rice University, Houston, TX; Brooklyn Public Library, NY; Brooklyn Historical Society, NY; and Brooklyn Museum, in addition to public installations with Public Art Fund and For Freedoms / Times Square Arts. Her work has also been exhibited at the 2017 Venice Biennale, and will be included in the Glasgow International, UK (2021) and Prospect.5 (2021). She is the author of two artist books, An Alphabetical Accumulation of Approximate Observations (Endless Editions, 2019) and No New Theories (Printed Matter, 2019).

Deepak Rauniyar is a writer and filmmaker.  A former critic, he became the first Nepali director to compete at a major international film festival when his debut Highway premiered at the 2012 Berlinale.  His second film White Sun premiered at the 2016 Venice Film Festival with rave reviews. The film has screened throughout the world (Toronto, Busan, Locarno, and Rotterdam, New Directors New Films), winning major awards at Venice, Singapore, and Palm Spring film festivals. It was Nepal's official selection for Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film.

In 2017 The New York Times described Rauniyar as one of "The 9 New Directors You Need to Watch." An alumnus of the Toronto and Berlinale Talent Campuses and the Cannes Cinéfondation program, Rauniyar is developing his first English Language film, High and Low. His third feature, The Sky Is Mine (TFL Co-production Award 2019), is in the advanced financing stage. He has served as a member of the jury at Locarno and Sydney Film Festivals.

Rowan Renee explores how queer identity is mediated by the law. Their work addresses intergenerational trauma, gender-based violence and the impact of the criminal justice system through image, text and installation. Their solo exhibitions include Z at Pioneer Works (2015) and Bodies of Wood at the Aperture Foundation (2017). They have received awards from the Aaron Siskind Foundation, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, the Harpo Foundation, and were named a finalist for the 2020 NYFA Artist Fellowship in Craft/Sculpture.

Between the Lines, their current project supported by We, Women Photo, collaborates with ten incarcerated artists through correspondence based art workshops to address the impact of incarceration on LGBTQ+ communities in Florida. Their installation, No Spirit For Me (2019), is included in the critically acclaimed exhibition Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, curated by Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood, at MoMA PS1. In 2021, they will be an Artist-in-Residence at the NARS Foundation and the Center for Book Arts in New York, and Red Bull House of Art in Detroit.

Queen Drea: An architect of composed sounds derived mainly from my voice. Live and in the moment…

Queen Drea, recipient of a 2017 American Composers Forum Minnesota Emerging Composer Award, is a vocalist, performance, and soundscape artist whose pieces are often conceived under the auspices of improvisational settings which is where she thrives most. This gives her the freedom to enhance each piece as she is moved by the audience and as they are moved by her music, soundscapes and poetry, creating a symbiotic relationship between Drea and her audience.

Queen Drea has created work about depression in the Black community for Intermedia Arts, and about the loss of Black men’s lives in America at Red Eye Theater. She has been commissioned to compose soundscapes for Ananya Dance Theatre and Black Label Movement, sound design for Penumbra Theatre’s production of For Colored Girls, Pillsbury House Theatre's The Great Divide 3 and 4, is a 2020 Naked Stages Fellow with Pillsbury House Theatre and a part of Penumbra Theater's initial Ashe Lab cohort.  https://www.queendrea.com

“I have been investigating some thoughts on Black Love and how it is strong enough to withstand being denied. Acknowledging that the way we came to this country and the way our families were separated is the reason why we are separated now.  Acknowledging the pain of this reality. Acknowledging the beauty of this reality. Acknowledging Black Love in its many forms and expressing this love through my art.” –Queen Drea

Lindsay Rhyner is a Textile Artist living and working in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At the start of her career, she withdrew from school in order to make art outside of institutional influence. Through travel and exploring, Lindsay discovered a new interest in manipulating and collaging textiles, combining assorted mediums and interests such as sewing, beading, collage and painting. Lindsay Rhyner is mostly self-taught in the Textile Arts and has been working in fabric for most of her artistic career. She has focused on creating wall hangings from a variety of materials from unique sources, most being waste or second-hand textile goods.

In 2016 she received a Jerome Fellowship for Emerging Artists and had a solo show at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. In 2019 she participated in a three-month artist residency in Daegu, South Korea.

Maribeth Romslo is a director, cinematographer, and producer who believes that well told stories have the power to change the world. Her award-winning films have played at festivals across the globe. Recent projects include an original documentary series (Handmade*Mostly) for Reese Witherspoon’s new media platform called Hello Sunshine, a conceptual dance film (Kitchen Dance) about the work of women, and a documentary about student free speech in America (Raise Your Voice).

Born in Oxford, England, Safran-Hon grew up in Haifa, Israel. She received her BA Summa Cum Laude from Brandeis University, 2008, in Studio Art and Art History and an MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2010. Safran-Hon attended Skowhegan in 2012 and Art Omi in 2016. She was a 2019-2020​ Workspace Resident at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Safran-Hon had solo exhibitions at Slag Gallery, NYC, Brandt Gallery, Amsterdam, and Marfa Contemporary, Marfa, TX, and group shows at the Haifa Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Marianne Boesky Gallery, and P.P.O.W Gallery. She was a recipient of the BRIC Colene Brown Art Prize in 2020.

Safran-Hon's visual work reflects on the way in which political reality affects the everyday. She lives and works in Brooklyn and is represented by Slag Gallery.

Rafael Samanez was born in Bahia, Brazil and grew up in Cleveland, OH. He now resides in New York City. His work as a community organizer is a source of inspiration for his films. He has been awarded the Frederick Douglass Award, Union Square Award, New York State Assembly Citation, and New York State Senate Citation. Samanez’s films delve into the intersectionality of gender, critical race theory, migration, class, and religion. He has received a 2018 Princess Grace Award/Honoraria in film and was a John Grist Documentary/BAFTA New York Scholar.

He graduated with an MFA from The City College of New York. His work has appeared in different film festivals such as the Atlanta LGBTQ+ Film Festival, Urbanworld, The New York Latino Film Festival, Mexico Shorts, and the San Francisco Trans Film Festival.

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) is an experimental performance collective founded in 2013 by Canadian-American choreographers, Briana Brown-Tipley + Hilary Brown-Istrefi, to challenge, deconstruct, and reimagine representations of identity towards understanding. S.A.S.’s interdisciplinary commissions have been presented at venues in the US, Canada, France, Greece, and Italy including Danspace Project; BRIC Arts | Media House; New York Live Arts; Dancemakers Centre for Creation; Centre d'Art Marnay Art Centre; Kinitiras; Libreria d’Arte Contemporanea; MOMus - State Museum of Contemporary Art; and the Archaeological Museum of Messenia. They are the recipients of a Queens Council on the Arts’ 2020 Queens Arts Fund New Work Grant (Multi-Discipline); New York Foundation for the Arts’ 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship (Choreography); Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ 2017 Emergency Grant (Dance); and were an Alternate and Finalist for the Jerome Foundation’s 2021-22 and 2019-20 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (Dance). sameassister.squarespace.com

Born in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. and raised in Apopka, Florida, Nicole Sealey is the author of Ordinary Beast, finalist for the PEN Open Book and Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. Her honors include a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from The American Poetry Review and a Poetry International Prize, as well as fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, CantoMundo, Cave Canem, MacDowell, The New York Foundation for the Arts and the Poetry Project. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2018, The New Yorker, the Paris Review and elsewhere.

SEVAN is an award-winning London and NYC-based playwright-actor. Sevan’s work has been seen in London and New York at The Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, The Flea Theatre, The Sheen Center, The Bush Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Theatre503, Rich Mix, The Old Red Lion, The Space, and Access Theatre. Member of the Bush Theatre inaugural 2015 Emerging Writers Group; The Public Theater 2011 Emerging Writers Group; NYTW Usual Suspect; Rising Circle Theatre Collective 2010 InkTANK Writer's Lab. NYTW 2011/2012 Teaching Artist. 2017 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference Finalist. 2016 Kondazian Playwriting Award for Armenian Stories. 2016 Arch and Bruce Foundation Playwriting Prize. 2014/2015/2016 Princess Grace Award Semi-Finalist. 2014 Papatango Playwriting Prize Shortlist. 2014 Saroyan Social Justice/Human Rights Playwriting Award Finalist. 2010/2012 William Saroyan Playwriting Prize Finalist.

As an actor: New York: Dead are my People (NYTW), Mrs. Christie (world premiere), Lortel Award‐Winning Betrayed (Culture Project, LATW, Kennedy Center, PBS), Dead are my People (NYTW/Noor), Bunty Berman Presents, Betty Shamieh’s The Strangest, NYTW’s Aftermath, NYMF’s Les Enfants des Paris, Prospect’s Mapquest, FringeNYC’s hit Perez Hilton Saves the Universe…. TV/Film: The Dictator, Madame Secretary, Blue Bloods, Damages, M.O.N.Y. London: Scenes from 68* Years, bi, Maroon. Regional includes: world premiere of Language Rooms at the Wilma Theatre, Evita, City of Angels, Into the Woods, Company.

Kavita Shah is a vocalist, composer, polyglot, and lifelong New Yorker hailed by NPR for possessing an “amazing dexterity for musical languages”. Her projects blending modern jazz, folkloric traditions and new music include Visions (2014, co-produced by Lionel Loueke), the interdisciplinary Folk Songs of Naboréa (2017, premiered at Park Avenue Armory), and Interplay, in duet with bassist François Moutin (2018, nominated for France’s Victoire de la Musique for Jazz Album of the Year).

She is currently working on an album of traditional Cape Verdean music, based on her ongoing ethnographic research, and another album of original music with her jazz quintet. Kavita regularly performs her music at major concert halls, festivals, and clubs on six continents, and her work has been supported by Jerome Foundation, Chamber Music America, Camargo Foundation, and David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. She holds degrees from Harvard College and Manhattan School of Music.

Kevin Sun is a saxophonist and composer living in New York City. He has released three albums under his name, most recently (Un)seaworthy in 2020, and his work has been recognized by publications such as The New York Times, the Village Voice, and DownBeat, among others. Sun is also a member of the co-led ensembles Earprint and Mute, and he has performed and recorded with the bands of Dana Saul, Juanma Trujillo, and Xiongguan Zhang. In addition to performing in New York, Sun has performed regularly in China and is the Artistic Director of the Blue Note China Jazz Orchestra.

Anjna Swaminathan (she/they) is a queer nonbinary multidisciplinary composer, musician, and theatre artist. Her/their work exists at the nexus of multiple creative disciplines, simultaneously leaning into the rigor available within each form while seeking release from a singular form entirely. As an artist with a passion for social critique, community building, and critical consciousness, Anjna’s artistic practice is an extension of an activist spirit. Thus, much of her/their work uses expression and storytelling to forge connections across cultural, economic, gendered, racial, and sexual identities and communities.

Informed by rigorous training in the art music traditions of India, Anjna incorporates and expands this vocabulary in original compositional work as well as the vibrant creative music and improvisatory scene in New York City. Anjna was a 2020 Roulette Van Lier Fellow and is the inaugural Pathways Fellow at the American Composer's Orchestra. Anjna's solo meditation on Borderline Personality Disorder and binary existence, |borders/lines| will premiere at Roulette in Spring 2021.

Kenneth Tam's work often takes the form of video installations that include moving-image works and sculpture, and currently explores ideas around the negotiation and performance of group identity. His work has been exhibited at SculptureCenter, MIT List Visual Arts Center, and the Hammer Museum among other institutions. He will have a solo exhibition at the Queens Museum in the spring of 2021, and will participate in The Shed's upcoming Open Call.  He recently produced his first live(streamed) performance at The Kitchen, and has been an artist-in-residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Pioneer Works, The Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, and the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, CA. He is a graduate of the Cooper Union and is based in Brooklyn.

Kelly Todd is a native of Houston, TX and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. She received a BFA in Modern Dance from Texas Christian University and a Double Minor in Biology and Environmental Science. She performs with the critically-acclaimed, award winning off-broadway show Sleep No More. Along with performing, she also teaches Mindfulness and Sex Education at Waterfront Montessori School in Jersey City, NJ. Kelly has been awarded the Brooklyn Arts Fund Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Choreography, LEIMAY Fellowship, and Puffin Foundation Grant. She is currently in development for an environmental dance film series, Under Review, which highlights the American National Monuments that are threatened to be opened for industrial development.

Her films have been featured in multiple film festivals and have been awarded “Most Inspirational Film” from TopShorts and “Best Narrative” from Jacksonville Dance Film Festival.

Choreographer and performer Mariana Valencia, is an LMCC Extended Life grantee (2020), a Whitney Biennial artist (2019), a Bessie Award recipient for Outstanding Breakout Choreographer (2018), a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award to Artists grant recipient (2018), and a Jerome Travel and Study Grant fellow (2014-15). Her work has been commissioned by Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project, The Whitney Museum, The Shed, Performance Space New York and The Public Theater. Valencia has toured nationally and internationally in England, Norway, Macedonia and Serbia; her residencies include AUNTS, Chez Bushwick, New York Live Arts, ISSUE Project Room, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Gibney Dance Center, Movement Research, and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (OR). Valencia has been the co-editor of Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence (2016-17) and she holds a BA from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA (2006) with a concentration in dance and ethnography.

Max Vernon is a 3 time Drama Desk nominee, Out100 Honoree, and recipient of the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical, Richard Rodgers Award, Pew Arts and Culture Grant, Jonathan Larson Grant, New York Stage and Film's Founders Award, New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship, and the JFund Award from the Jerome Foundation. They have been a Dramatist Guild Theatre Fellow, MacDowell Fellow, and an artist in residence at Berkeley Rep, Ars Nova, Kimmel Center (viaThe Public Theater), Disney Creative Entertainment, and Rhinebeck Writer’s Retreat, among others. Their musical, The View UpStairs, ran 105 performances Off-Broadway and has subsequently had 20+ productions around the country & world. Their other musical, KPOP, was the most nominated Off-Broadway show of the 2017-2018 season and is preparing to transfer to Broadway once social distancing ain't a thing.

Max is also an acclaimed cabaret artist. Notable concert performances include a sold out 6 month residency at Joe’s Pub of the Public Theater (Existential Life Crisis Lullaby), Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.maxvernon.com

Instagram: @frauleinsallybowels

Twitter: @maxvernon

Alicia Waller is a multi-talented vocal composer whose vision is to inspire cultural diplomacy through music. With a background in opera as a soprano vocalist, Alicia has since focused on soul music, jazz, and the African diaspora as the foundation for her EP Some Hidden Treasure, released in February 2020. Her voice and sound have been hailed as “flexible and virtuosic”.

Alicia’s work and process were recently featured in the documentary short What Moves You by SkyHour. She seeks to create inspiring and progressive music that highlights the depth and beauty of the human experience.