Past
Grantees

Preeti Kaur Rajpal (she/her) is a poet and nonfiction writer. She first began writing as a student of June Jordan in her “Poetry for the People” program. Preeti’s work can be found in The Sikh Review, qarrtsiluni, Memoir Journal’s I Speak From My Palms Anthology, American Public Media’s On Being Blog, Spook Mag, Jaggery Lit, Blueshift Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, Popula, Lantern Review, and others. She is a recent Loft Literary Mentor Series Poetry Fellow, Voices of Our Nations Arts Fellow, Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Incubator Fellow, and Writing By Writers Fellow.

Fellowship Statement

I am working on my first collection of poems, tentatively titled O! How We Escaped! My poems explore issues of colonialism, post-colonialism, immigrant status in the US, patriarchy, post-9/11 Islamophobia specific to the effects on Sikhs in the US, human rights issues in India, India’s Partition, my family’s journey as refugees during that time, and my understanding of Sikh philosophy.

Photo by Anna Min.

As an independent choreographer and Choreographic Associate with Ragamala Dance Company, Ashwini Ramaswamy’s (she/her) work references ancient myths and ritualistic practices, global literature and poetry, and the mixed media contemporary culture she has absorbed for over 30 years. Her work draws from myriad influences to express a personal identity with universal resonance. Celebrated for her ability to “[weave] together, both fearfully and joyfully, the human and the divine” (New York Times), Ashwini has studied Bharatanatyam since the age of five. She has toured extensively with Ragamala, performing throughout the U.S. and in Russia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan, the U.K, and India. Ashwini's choreographic work has been presented by the Cowles Center, the Yard, and the Joyce Theater, among others. Her work is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s US Artist International, and the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, among others.

Fellowship Statement

I have spent decades steeped in the south Indian classical dance form of Bharatanatyam. I am committed to maintaining the beauty, technique, rigor, and values embedded in the form as it has been taught to me, while creating my own personal vision of women’s representation in performance. Like a phantom limb, my Indian ancestry lingers within me, informing my artistic work and daily interactions; my upbringing in both India and the U.S. has encouraged an aesthetic perspective with a hybrid internal compass. As an artist of diaspora, I am a cultural carrier with an instinct to move within ancestral patterns. There is a continuum between what we perceive as real/tangible and what we accept as unknown/unknowable; this gravitation between the human, the natural, and the metaphysical—which are forever engaged in sacred movement—is a focal point in my work.

Photo by Ed Bock.

Deneane Richburg (she/her) grew up a competitive figure skater, spending time in spaces where she felt she had to check her racial/cultural identity at the door, as the predominantly white skating world excluded her ancestry’s truths. To quote Zora Neale Hurston, Deneane always felt “most colored when [she was] thrown against a sharp white background.” As an adult, she realized the need to carve out a space for her ancestral history, so she established Brownbody, a creative home for her artistic work that fuses theater, dance, social justice practice, and skating. Through Brownbody, she honors the complex narratives of Black diasporic communities. As a modern dance choreographer and skater, Deneane is interested in expanding creative expression on the ice by engaging ancestral narratives as a framework for movement exploration. Deneane is a grateful recipient of a 2017 McKnight Choreography Fellowship administered by the Cowles Center and funded by The McKnight Foundation.

Fellowship Statement

I fuse different movement worlds; a modern dance choreographer that presents works on and off of the ice. The themes of my work range from visual objectification through the story of Saartjie Baartman to issues of re-memory through a piece based on Toni Morrison’s Beloved. My latest on ice evening length work is Quiet As It’s Kept, which focuses on the Reconstruction era and rise of Jim Crow laws. I’m interested in ensemble work on the ice. As a dancer I’ve performed with companies in ensemble pieces and have learned to appreciate the intricacies and manipulation of group nuances—engaging many bodies to create a fully realized and unified statement. I am interested in exploring the power of these elements on the ice in telling stories relevant to my ancestral history. Currently I am working on an ice ensemble piece that explores American Black social dances of the 17th through 19th centuries.

Photo by Alice Gebura.

Walken Schweigert (he/him) is a performer, composer and director from Saint Paul, MN. He is the founder and artistic director of Open Flame Theatre, an all queer/trans ensemble that creates surrealist and queer-centered work. Walken is a 2009 graduate of the Dell’ Arte International School for Physical Theatre, and a 2006 graduate of the Perpich Center for Arts Education (Theatre Major). He has worked with the Taller Xuchialt and Ronda de Barro in Leon, Nicaragua; toured with and been mentored by the internationally renowned Double Edge Theatre in Ashfield, MA; and has busked on the streets of 11 countries. A classically trained violinist, he has been part of over a dozen musical ensembles of varying genres, from klezmer to metal. Walken was recently the recipient of a JFund award from the Jerome Foundation via the American Composers’ Forum for the composition of his second opera, The Garden, to be produced by Open Flame Theatre and Philadelphia Community Farm.

Fellowship Statement

I see my role as an artist as someone who crosses, transgresses and thrives in between boundaries. My mission is to create original, multi-disciplinary performances rooted in the queer/trans experience. Through exploring the surreal and fantastic, I seek to liberate the imagination which I recognize as a vital part of the larger struggle for justice and freedom.

What is the relationship between ritual and performance? Between song and story? How do we celebrate together? How do we grieve together? How can we harness the power of story and song to liberate our imaginations and expand our creative potential? What new traditions/rituals/rites of passage can we make for and with each other that affirm and express who we truly are? This is what I hope to explore in my fellowship. I hope at the end of it I will have made an honest contribution to a transforming cultural fabric.

Photo by Connie Chang.

Kavita Shah makes work in deep engagement with the jazz tradition while also addressing and advancing its global sensibilities. A lifelong New Yorker of Indian origin hailed for possessing an “amazing dexterity for musical languages” (NPR), Shah incorporates her ethnographic research on traditional musical practices from Brazil, Cape Verde, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, Turkey, and India into her original compositions.

Her debut album VISIONS, co-produced by guitarist Lionel Loueke, was released in 2014 to great critical acclaim. Out of this project was born the Kavita Shah Quintet, a touring ensemble presenting Shah’s music and arrangements at clubs, concert halls, and festivals around the world. In 2018, Shah and bassist François Moutin released Interplay, a program of standards, originals, and improvised music with guests Martial Solal and NEA Jazz Master Sheila Jordan; it was nominated for a Victoire du Jazz (French Grammy Award) for Album of the Year.

In 2017, Kavita was invited by MacArthur genius winner Jason Moran to premiere a large-scale work at the Park Avenue Armory. She created Folk Songs of Naboréa, a contemporary song-cycle for seven voices that imagines the folk music of a futuristic, post-nuclear society. The interdisciplinary piece was named by Nate Chinen as a Top 10 Performance of 2017.

From her formal training at Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard, Shah draws a keen interest in complex arrangements and adventurous approaches to the voice as an instrument. Just as important to Shah is oral tradition, which she credits for grounding her vision of music as not just pursuit of virtuosity, but also cultural work. She won the ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Award in 2013, and has received research grants from DRCLAS, Jerome Foundation, and Asian Cultural Council. In 2019, she will be a composer-in-residence at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, where she will work on an ongoing research project about the migration of sounds and people in the Lusophone diaspora, with an emphasis on the Portuguese presence in colonial India.

Dameun Maurice Strange (he/him) is a sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, and award-winning composer whose conceptual chamber works, choral pieces and operas are focused on stories of the African diaspora, often exploring Afrofuturist themes. In 2011, he partnered with award-winning choreographer Erinn Liebhard to present Railing Forward, a suite inspired by the legend of John Henry. The following year he was commissioned by the contemporary dance ensemble Alternative Motion Project to compose music for their premier program, Prometheus, Fire bringer and Lost in My Mind. This relationship would last 5 years and include NTimeBeautyN, HeartBeatRed, Penumbra|Corona.

In 2013, Dameun presented his first composition recital of new works, New Constellations at the Baroque Room in Saint Paul. In 2015 he presented his third composition recital which featured a cantata for Chamber Choir, Poet and Soprano, Resonant Frequencies: Love and Revolution. Strange was awarded the Minnesota Emerging Composers Award by the American Composers Forum in 2015 which led to the development his first opera, Mother King.

Fellowship Statement

I am a sound artist, multi-instrumentalist whose conceptual chamber works, choral pieces and operas are focused on stories of the African diaspora, often exploring Afrofuturist themes. I am compelled to express through sound and poetry, the beauty and resilience of the Black experience, digging into a pantheon of ancestors to tell stories of triumph, while connecting the past, present, and future. While my sound experiments have many dimensions, I use West African polyrhythms, with classical music forms, contemporary jazz harmonic explorations, along with found sounds and historic recordings to create modern Afrofuturist performances that disrupt the notion of genre and what Black music is and can be and moreover what Blackness is and can be.

Photo by Jim Nihart.

Emily Strasser is a Minneapolis-based writer. She received her MFA in nonfiction from the University of Minnesota and work has appeared in Ploughshares, Guernica, Colorado Review, Catapult, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and Tricycle. Her essays have been listed as notable in Best American Essays 2016 and 2017, and she was a winner of the 2015 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest and a 2016 AWP Intro Award. Her work has been supported by the Minnesota State Arts Board, the W.K. Rose Fellowship from Vassar College, the Jerome Foundation, and the University of Minnesota Human Rights Program. She served as a 2018-19 Olive B. O'Connor Fellow in Creative Writing at Colgate University.

She is working on a book about the intersection of family and national secrets in the nuclear city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She is interested in the stories we tell about ourselves—personally, publicly, culturally—the stories institutions tell, and the intersections and fissures between them. In Cassis, she plans to research the ITER project, the world's largest experimental fusion reactor, which proposes to build a star on Earth, while meditating on the characteristics, causes, and consequences of brilliance, both literal and figurative.

Darrius Strong (he/him) is a Twin Cities based choreographer, dancer, and educator whose creative work has been performed in Walker Art Center’s Choreographers Evening and Rhythmically Speaking. He was featured in the 2015 New Griots Festival as well as an American Standard Billboard advertisement in New York City Time Square in 2016. He was a 2017 Momentum New Works recipient. Strong has created works for Threads Dance Project, Flying Foot Forum, Alternative Motion Projects, and most recently was commissioned to create a new work for James Sewell Ballet. Strong developed his own dance company STRONGmovement in 2015. He is a faculty member at Saint Paul Conservatory Performing Arts High School, TU Dance Center. At Eleve Performing Arts Center, he teaches young dancers how to connect their identity to movement. Strong is also a company member of Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater.

Fellowship Statement

I tell stories through movement. I feel that our bodies tell stories and it’s up to us as individuals to define those stories. As a child it was hard for me to communicate my feelings through words, so I began to rely on movement as an outlet in times of sadness, frustration, anger, and other emotions.

I created my own dance company, STRONGmovement, because I truly believe that movement empowers conversation between dancers and audiences. Conversation invokes community building, an aspect of my background in hip hop I center in my work. Through the movement I create, I desire to empower others, create communities, inspire people to invest in themselves and their stories.

Photo by Bill Cameron.

Mazz Swift (she/her) is violinist, vocalist, composer and conductor working at the intersection of composition, improvisation, and performance. She engages audiences with her signature weaving of improvisation and composition, combining elements of classical, folk, rock, jazz, free improv and electronica to create a rich, unique and diverse musical experience. As a violinist, Mazz plays electric and acoustic instruments and has performed and recorded with a wide range of artists from Butch Morris to Bruce Springsteen and Idina Menzel, and with her own band, MazzMuse. As a composer, Mazz has received commissions from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, and others. As an improviser, Mazz plays with Nicole Mitchell, The Silkroad Ensemble, and her collaborative trio HEAR in NOW. She is active as a conductor and educator, and has performed and taught workshops in free improvisation and Conduction (conducted improvisation) on six continents. Mazz lives in Brooklyn.

Fellowship Statement

I believe fiercely in the power of improvisation to improve people's lives. As a violinist, vocalist, conductor, and composer, I incorporate improvisation into everything I create and have witnessed its transformational force in performances, workshops, conversations, and collaborations. Practicing, hearing, and witnessing improvisation creates profound human experience.

I revel in the art and craft of composition—conjuring textures and moods, generating vibes and grooves, constructing a whole from many parts. My practice of mindfulness and compassion through meditation—in music and in life—compels me to use whatever power I have to foster awareness: in myself, in my music, and in the world, with an aim toward radical change. I want to uplift anyone who is willing to listen. In every area of my life, I aspire to transform and be transformed.

Photo by Nisha Sondhe Photography.

Michael Torres was born and brought up in Pomona, California where he spent his adolescence as a graffiti artist. He earned his MFA in creative writing at Minnesota State University, Mankato. His poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, Water~Stone Review and as The Missouri Review’s Poem of the Week, among others. Torres has received awards and fellowships from the Minnesota State Arts Board, Jerome Foundation, CantoMundo and the National Endowment for the Arts. His work explores identity via examinations of masculinity and culture.

“All-American Mexican” is a series of poems that grapples with belonging and how, for a person of color living in the United States, the need for acceptance often encourages a kind of assimilation that causes tension between the assimilator and their hometown/culture. Torres is interested in the implications of the term “All-American”: a denotation of excellence (i.e. All-American Security Systems) and how a person (traditionally white, American males, i.e. Jack Armstrong, the All-American boy) can self-identify. Considering his cultural heritage, he is interested in how he himself is, can, and cannot be an All-American. And what does an All-American Mexican look like? Can one exist? In which contexts?

Visit him at michaeltorreswriter.com

Ikechukwu Ufomadu (he/him) is a comic entertainer, named one of five “Comics to Watch in 2018” by Time Out New York. His original projects include: Ike at Night (The Public Theater), Nightcap | by Ike (Joe’s Pub at The Public), Ike Night (Ars Nova, San Francisco Sketchfest), Ike for the Holidays (Joe’s Pub at The Public), Ike by Chance (Ars Nova), Inspector Ike (Comedy Central Corporate Retreat), Ike’s Wonderful World of Leisure (Exponential Festival) and more. His short-form series Words with Ike has aired on VICE and IFC.

He trained at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts; the International Theatre Workshop in The Netherlands; and Studio Five’s theatre and dance programs in Indonesia. Ikechukwu has been an artist-in-residence at Joe’s Pub at The Public and SPACE on Ryder Farm.

Fellowship Statement

As a comic entertainer, my primary objective is to entertain, comically.

My work often takes the formats of classic American variety and talk shows and sets them in performance contexts that make them feel both familiar and strange. This results in humor that is disorienting and plays with people’s expectations, while maintaining a warm, welcoming “big tent” sensibility that invites an audience of diverse life experiences to come along for the ride.

Crafting intimate entertainments that can serve as sites of shared laughter, improvisation and play is a pressing need in a time marked by deep divisions, fragmentation and social deadlock. Indeed, our deepest impasses, individually and collectively, are marked by the absence of such play. My hope is to build a body of work that succeeds as entertainment while stimulating those human qualities necessary to not only cope with the problems of our time, but resolve them.

Photo by Mindy Tucker.

Imani Uzuri, raised in rural North Carolina, is an award-winning vocalist, composer, librettist, improviser and conceptual artist. She composes, performs and creates interdisciplinary works including concerts, ritual performances, albums, sound installations and compositions for chamber ensembles, voice and theater (including experimental and musical theater). Uzuri recently finished her tenure as a Jerome Foundation Composer/Sound Artist Fellow in support of her international travel and research for her forthcoming composing of a large music work celebrating the iconography of the Black Madonna which she is currently developing as a HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) Fellow. She was a 2018 commissioned composer for Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity where she presented the world premiere of her choral composition “Sustenance” with 31+ voices from around the world. Uzuri is a 2018 Chamber Music America New Jazz Works composer commissionee. Dubbed “a postmodernist Bessie Smith” by The Village Voice, the New York Times calls her work “stirring” and Time Out New York says “Uzuri never fails to mesmerize audiences with her narcotic blend...of ethereal sounds.”

As a 2019 Composer in Residence at Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, Uzuri will visit Black Madonna shrines in Marseilles and Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, integrate her research from previous international Black Madonna sojourns and begin developing the libretto and composing the score for her forthcoming aformentioned large music work Songs of Sanctuary for the Black Madonna. www.imaniuzuri.com

Alejandro Varela (he/him) is a writer based in New York. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the New Republic, the Southampton Review, Pariahs (an anthology, SFA Press, 2016), Blunderbuss Magazine, the Offing, Brooklyn Rail, Joyland Magazine, the Scholar and Feminist Online, the Rumpus, and has received honorable mention from Glimmer Train Press. He was a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Nonfiction, and a resident in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s 2017–2018 Workspace program. He is also an associate editor at Apogee Journal. Alejandro holds a master's degree in Public Health from the University of Washington, Seattle. Prior to his writing career, he managed cancer-screening studies, designed HIV/AIDS health worker curriculum, and taught public health advocacy.  alejandrovarela.org

Fellowship Statement

I write about the complexities of class-jumping. I see strength within community, and solidarity across communities, as health intervention. I draw from public health research on stress and inequity to craft tales that paint a way forward. My hope is for readers to finish my stories and think, “Reparations for the descendants of slaves, of course!” Or “A minimum wage of $30 per hour (pegged to inflation), duh!” But I also want my writing to make people ask themselves: “How do Ben Affleck and George Clooney each have Oscars while Alfre Woodard has only been nominated once... 35 years ago?”

I’m currently finishing a collection of short stories, and I'm working on a novel about a man who returns home to care for his parents. Several of his high school friends also struggle to survive. He traces the roots of their poor health to the isolation of their formative years.

Photo by Charly Debrosse © LMCC.

Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota) (she/her) is a visual artist and independent curator based in Minneapolis. White Hawk earned an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2011) and BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico (2008). Recent support of White Hawk’s work includes 2019 United States Artists Fellowship in Visual Art, 2019 Eiteljorg Fellowship for Contemporary Art, 2019 Forecast for Public Art Mid-Career Development Grant, 2018 Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists, and a 2017 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowship. Her work is represented by Bockley Gallery in Minneapolis.

Fellowship Statement

As a woman of Sičangu Lakota and European American ancestry, I was raised within Native and urban American communities. My work reflects these cross-cultural experiences through the combination of modern abstract painting and abstract Lakota art forms. Some works are executed strictly in paint while others incorporate beads and porcupine quillwork onto a painted surface, weaving aesthetics and conceptual influences from each respective history.

I strive to create honest, inclusive compositions that acknowledge all parts of my history, Native and non-Native, urban, academic and cultural education systems. This platform allows me to start from center, deepening my own understanding of the intricacies of self and culture, correlations between personal and national history, and indigenous and mainstream art histories.

The work encourages conversations that challenge the lack of representation of Native arts, people and voices in our national consciousness while highlighting the truth and necessity of equality and intersectionality.

Richard Wiebe’s (he/him) award-winning work has screened widely at international film festivals including IFF Rotterdam, Media City, Cannes Cinéfondation, FIDMarseille, Festival du nouveau cinéma Montreal, UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and several others. He is the recipient of grants from the Princess Grace Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Richard teaches courses in sound design, screenwriting, and the art of the short at Hamline University and FilmNorth. He is the Experimental Cinema programmer for the Minneapolis/Saint Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF) and a member of the collective Cellular Cinema.

Fellowship Statement

My current project-in-progress is a feature-length experimental documentary focusing on World War I cameraman Leon Caverly, the first official war cinematographer of the United States military. Using Caverly’s pro-war cinematography found in the National Archives, I will fashion an anti-war film. Caverly shot the film 100 years ago, I will edit and do the sound design. This constraint-based collaboration with Caverly will also include materials from early American cinema, television, and other archival sources, alongside contemporary footage I have shot. Ultimately, this project will result in a de-stratified history of American militarism from the canons of the Confederacy at the Siege of Petersburg to depictions of unrest today. World War I propaganda, where cinematic propaganda first blossomed, is the center that holds it all together.

Nia O. Witherspoon (she/her) is a black queer writer/director, vocalist/composer, and cultural worker. Described as “especially fascinating” by Backstage Magazine, and named in Phoenix’s “Top 100” Artists, Witherspoon’s work creates contemporary ritual-space grounded in African Diaspora sensibilities to speak to the issues of our times. Currently in residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Witherspoon has received New York Theatre Workshop’s (NYTW) 2050 Playwriting/Directing Fellowship, BRIC’s Premiere Residency, Astraea Foundation’s Global Arts Fund Grant, Brooklyn Arts Fund (BAC), Downtown Urban Theatre Festival’s “Audience Award,” Lambda Literary’s Emerging Playwriting Fellowship, and a Mellon Dissertation Fellowship. Her works, including The Messiah Complex, YOUMINE, and SHE have been developed or featured at BRIC, HERE, NYTW, National Black Theatre, BAAD, Dixon Place, The Fire This Time Festival, and Movement Research. Witherspoon holds a PhD from Stanford University, and is currently a Playwright-in-Residence at University of Massachusetts (Amherst). She has works commissioned in the 2019-20 season by The Shed, Playwright’s Realm, La Mama ETC, and JACK.

Fellowship Statement

I am a concept-driven artist invested in creating spaces where black/queer/trans/female folks, and, more largely people of color, are able to be seen in their full humanity, and their full divinity. This means that while contemporary tragedy and inter-generational trauma often trigger a project’s inception, ultimately, I aim for my works to place my communities in a context that far exceeds the 500-years of colonial time and instead to find the palimpsest of wisdom in liberation. Freedom is not something I have achieved yet, but it is something I feel pulled uncontrollably toward. I am working to cultivate freedom in myself, in my works, and in my collaborators, by any means necessary. I am also learning that freedom is very much about surrender to the imperfect, and so I try to create spaces (from plays to rituals to rehearsal rooms) where vulnerability is the most valuable currency.

I am deeply inspired by the resonance inside of dissonance—particularly in reparation of the sacred/secular binary. I am also invested in the concepts of layering and unfolding, as the nature of diaspora is palimpsestic, cyclical, and always in motion. In The Dark Girl Chronicles, Yoruba divination scripture lives alongside verbatim investigation-room testimony, court transcripts, and Cardi B to unearth the stories of black women warriors against state violence. I am excited by the potential of theatre to allow us to see what we would otherwise not see—the moonlit vision—the “magic eye” that offers a window the Great Mystery. In The Messiah Complex, the nightclub has permission to become the ritual ground and sacred cemetery. A heteronormative Black Panther has permission to love a transwoman. And his transmasculine child has permission to become the Messiah, leading the next generation of the black liberation struggle.

Photo by  Zavé Martohardjono.

André M. Zachery (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist and founding artistic director of Brooklyn-based Renegade Performance Group (RPG). Zachery’s practice, research and community engagement artistically focuses on Black/African Diaspora cultural practices through the mediums of choreography, site-specific projects, film, digital projection, audio installations and responsive technology. He is a former Jerome Foundation supported Movement Research artist-in-residence and a 2016 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship/Gregory Millard Fellow in Choreography. He has served as a guest faculty artist in dance departments at Florida State University, Virginia Commonwealth University and Ohio State University. His works have received acclaimed reviews from the New York Times, Culturebot and other notable publications. RPG has presented work at Danspace Project, The Kennedy Center, Wexner Center for the Arts, Harlem Stage and the Brooklyn Museum. Zachery extensively collaborates with artists of various genres and mediums to create innovative projects that expand notions of performance and space.

Fellowship Statement

I am interested in dimensionality as a means to disrupt and dismantle hierarchy. Currently, my work and research in Afrofuturism reconsiders the relationship of the Black body in digital landscapes to recoding (virtual) reality. The presence, experiences and narratives of the African Diaspora are severely lacking in the field of performance and technology. For me dimensionality offers the ability to shape and form our stories, legacies, myths and sense of place with complexity and nuance in consideration to time. Moving forward, I want to find ways to actualize the conversation and theory of Black futurity into physical and material spaces.  I want people to input their information into a constructed environment where the material and physical architectures interact cohesively with supporting sonic and visual elements, exploring how Afrofuturism can be a generative mechanism to address societal issues with parity, equity and resourcefulness

Photo by Rachel Neville.

Pallavi Sharma Dixit (she/her) earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the recipient of a number of grants and fellowships and has taught creative writing at the Loft Literary Center. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and two children and is at work on a novel.

Fellowship Statement

I was born in India and raised in Edison, New Jersey – a Little India in America – and this history informs all my writing.

When I earned degrees in history from the University of Pennsylvania I didn’t know how I would use them, but it turns out this is how: my fiction examines Indian immigration, Thomas Edison’s work ethic, anti-Indian racism, the evolution of Indian film, and the transformation of an American suburb into an ethnic enclave.

My novel-in-progress, Edison, deals also with romance, obsession, anxiety and the pressure of the American Dream. It is influenced both by the Bollywood movies and American sitcoms I grew up on. At every turn it bears the imprint of my life.

I try not to let my process be all agony; I find the humor and amuse myself. I like when movie stars unexpectedly enter my scenes. And I like em dashes so much.