Past
Grantees

The artist will  travel to Leavenworth, Lawrence, Topeka, Manhattan, Strong City, El Dorado, Wichita and Republic, KS and Beatrice, NE for 25 days. Alberti will take a 25-day car trip from Minnesota to Kansas to conduct extensive research in local history in support of his first book, a historical novel tentatively titled El Dorado.

The artist will  travel to Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa for 21 days. Codjoe will meet with the poet Phillippa Yaa De Villiers, visit the Museum of Contemporary African Art in Cape Town, and reflect on: “In what ways can my poems variously render the inherent connections between the personal and the political, the public and the private?”

The artist will travel to Phoenix, AZ for 4 days to participate in the 2018 NonfictioNOW conference, to be hosted by Arizona State University.

The artist will travel to Panama City, Panama for 90 days. Holnes will interview family members in Panama about their experiences of Operation Just Cause (the US Invasion of Panama to remove General Manuel Noriega from power) as inspiration for a book of poems about Panama and family.

The artist will travel to Guangzhou and Fujian provinces, China for 17 days. Kamps will experience cross-cultural immersion as a form of research to complete his novel Drawing Water.

The artist will travel to Boston, Massachusetts for 4 days to interview relatives about his late father and complete research for a book-length collection of poems.

The artist will travel to Shanghai, Hangzhou, Ningbo and Beijing, China to conduct oral interviews with extended family members and to study Chinese Socialist Realist monuments in support of her Cultural Revolution memoir project.

The artist will travel to Paris, France for 11 days. As a writer engaged with the influence of designed space on identity formation, Morgan will study the archival papers of Charles-Ėdouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier), a leader of modernist architecture.

The artist will travel to Port of Spain, Trinidad and St. George, Tobago for 18 days to research queerness, LGBTQ experiences, African spirituality and magic to inform her young adult novel exploring these intersections.

The artist will travel to Alameda and San Francisco, CA for 59 days. Reed will conduct research at the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park Research Center and study navigation at the Maritime Academy with the hope of gaining an understanding of her personal history in a wider cultural context to elucidate her in-progress memoir.

The artist will travel to St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands for 8 days. Sealey will visit the places of her childhood and take notes towards a series of prose poems inspired by those places as she remembers them and as they currently are, in the wake of hurricanes Irma and Maria.

The artist will travel to Buffalo, New York for 9 days to study the natural systems of an urban farm and to explore the migration history of African Americans to and through the Western New York region.

The artist will travel to Nong Khai, Thailand and Luang Prabang, Laos for 15 days. As an essential part of the refugee healing process, Vongsay will travel to Nongkhai, Thailand and Vientiane, Laos to retrace, reimagine, and record her family’s journey after the Secret War.

Hawa Allan, New York City, received $5,000 to conduct interviews in Minnesota, Toronto and London as part of a research project on resettled Somali communities.

Jeff Bennett, Minnesota, received $5,000 to follow a path across the western United States in research for an anticipated character's journey.

Mackenzie Epping, Minnesota, received $5,000 to travel to Berlin, Germany to walk and bicycle the 100-mile Berliner Mauerweg (Berlin Wall Trail) and ride the full length of all 24 city train lines in order to research, document, and reflect the impact of border structures on the movement of people, material which will inform a collection of lyric essays.

T'ai Freedom Ford, New York City, received $5,000 to attend the Black Portraiture(s) III Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, and collaborate with South African photographer, Zanele Muholi.

Anu Jindal, New York City, received $5,000 to travel to India to engage in firsthand research of key locations to directly appear in a novel-in-progress; conduct in-person interviews of tribal villagers and shamans; view distinct cultural practices; and  access significant, non-lending reference texts and cultural exhibitions.

Jonathan Katz, New York City, received $4,305 to travel to Tobago and conduct interviews with elderly Tobagonians and attend the Tobago Heritage Festival.

Sally Wen Mao, New York City, received $5,000 to travel to six different locations in China for immersion into arts communities and to conduct preliminary research for a potential new book project about the lives of contemporary Chinese artists and writers.