Welcoming Our 2024 Spring Fellows for Writing Downtown

We’re thrilled to announce the next fellows for our Writer’s Residency in Downtown Las Vegas. We welcome our fellows Eric Tanyavutti, Liz Iversen, Jared Jackson, Mimi Lok, and Krista Knight.

Fellows will spend a month in the vibrant heart of downtown Las Vegas, engaging with and becoming a part of the city’s thriving arts scene. The fellowship is designed to give talented writers and other creatives the space, time, and freedom to work on their longform projects, and the bibliophilic joy of living in a fully furnished apartment next to Las Vegas’ literary hub, The Writer’s Block bookstore.

Our apartment is in The Lucy, which also houses the Writer's Block. The Lucy is Beverly Rogers’ multi-use artist residency and complex, dedicated to fostering a creative community in Las Vegas.

Special thanks again to Nevada Humanities, UNLV, and private donors for helping bring these fellowships to life.

ERIC TANYAVUTTI - JANUARY 2024

Eric Tanyavutti works as a writer for a NY-based advertising agency, and lives in Evanston, IL with his wife and three children.

He has earned an MFA in fiction from the University of Illinois. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in literary magazines such as Blackbird, cream city review, The Tusculum Review, and Southeast Review. He's also the recipient of the Josephine M. Bresee Memorial Award in Short Fiction and has served as a Callaloo Fellow.

About his project: Eric will be working on completing a YA novel. 

LIZ IVERSEN - MARCH 2024

Liz Iversen has received support from Tin House, Aspen Words, Monson Arts, and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Fourteen Hills, Passages North, J Journal: New Writing on Justice, and elsewhere. The daughter of a former U.S. Navy private and a Filipina immigrant, Liz was born in the Philippines and grew up in South Dakota. She lives in Maine and is an MFA candidate at Antioch University. Find her online at Liziversen.com.

About her project: Liz’s  historical novel AFTER THE SAVIORS, is set in Japanese-occupied Philippines. Seventeen-year-old Liwayway seeks vengeance as a Huk guerrilla after her father is brutally murdered by occupying forces and her sister, Malaya, is kidnapped and forced to serve as a comfort woman. Told in the sisters’ alternating perspectives, AFTER THE SAVIORS explores hidden avenues of the past to reveal the strength of Filipino women and the power of familial love.

JARED JACKSON - MARCH 2024

Jared Jackson is a writer, editor, educator, and arts administrator born in Hartford, CT. His writing has been published in the Best American Short Stories 2023, New York Times Book Review, Yale Review, Guernica, Kenyon Review, n+1, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. He has been awarded residencies and fellowships from MacDowell (’21, ’23), Yaddo (’22, ’24), Center for Fiction, Baldwin for the Arts, Tin House, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Writer's Block Residency. He was a finalist for the 2023 Granum Foundation Prize. He received an MFA in fiction from Columbia University.

About his project: Jared will be working on a short story collection titled LOCALS. Though the characters and the stories in the collection are fictional, the streets, roads, and avenues are real. The landmarks, bus lines, and parks are real. The restaurants, smells, and sounds of the city are real. His intention: to create a world that the reader can enter. The stories in the collection are loosely but distinctly connected, asking thematic questions about love, race, neglect, loyalty, and community, among other items. The collection aims to explore questions such as: How do we learn to take better care of other? How do our communities raise us? How can we imagine a better future? His aim is to create stories and characters that leap off the page straight into the reader’s memory and consciousness. He aims to give his characters’ lives complexity and singularity, and hope to generate something rarer and more valuable than sympathy in the reader — compassion, understanding, recognition.  

MIMI LOK - APRIL 2024

Mimi Lok is the author of Last Of Her Name, which won a PEN/Bingham Award for debut story collection and a California Book Award silver medal for first fiction. She is also the recipient of a Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award for Social Progress, fellowships from MacDowell and Hambidge, and is a National Magazine Award and Northern California Book Award finalist. Her work can be found in McSweeney’s, the Believer, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. For almost fifteen years, Mimi was the executive director and executive editor of Voice of Witness a human rights/oral history nonprofit she cofounded that amplifies the voices of people impacted by—and fighting against—injustice.

About her project: She is currently working on a novel.

KRISTA KNIGHT - MAY 2024

Krista is a Juilliard Fellow, Page 73 Playwriting Fellow, MacDowell Fellow, Shank Playwriting Fellow at the Vineyard Theatre, Vanderbilt Writer-in-Residence, Chance Theater Resident Playwright, and winner of the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival, and the Broadway on Demand Film Festival.

Plays include SLOPPY BONNIE (Nashville Scene Critics Pick, Princess Grace Finalist), CRUSH (NYTimes Recommended, TimeOut Best Theater to Stream Online, featured in American Theatre Magazine, streaming on the Emmy App), LIPSTICK LOBOTOMY (Kilroys List, Trap Door Theatre), DON’T STOP ME – a musical with Dave Malloy (YMTC, Manhattan School of Music), KIRK AT THE SF AIRPORT HYATT (NYTW’s Residency, Vineyard reading), PRIMAL PLAY (New Georges), SELKIE (Williamstown Workshop, Dutch Kills) and CRIMSON LIT: SCARLET LETTER SET LIST – a musical with Jill Sobule (Polyphone Festival, Chance Theatre).

Commissions include the script for a ride at Tokyo Disney, The Steinmetz Lab, an EST/Sloan Commission, and DreamWorks/Music Theatre International.
BA: Brown University. MA: Performance Studies from NYU. MFA Playwriting: UCSD.
www.KristaKnight.com

About her project: This play follows how three urban planners’ unique gender performances shape competing urban landscapes. It will be an examination of a woman’s place and the places woman creates.

Welcoming our 2023 Fall Fellows for Writing Downtown

We’re thrilled to announce the next fellows for our Writer’s Residency in Downtown Las Vegas. We welcome our fellows Alice Sola Kim, Sil Hamilton, Yilin Wang, and Davin Malasarn.

Fellows will spend a month in the vibrant heart of downtown Las Vegas, engaging with and becoming a part of the city’s thriving arts scene. The fellowship is designed to give talented writers and other creatives the space, time, and freedom to work on their longform projects, and the bibliophilic joy of living in a fully furnished apartment next to Las Vegas’ literary hub, The Writer’s Block bookstore.

Our apartment is in The Lucy, which also houses the Writer's Block. The Lucy is Beverly Rogers’ multi-use artist residency and complex, dedicated to fostering a creative community in Las Vegas.

Special thanks again to Nevada Humanities, UNLV, and private donors for helping bring these fellowships to life.

Alice sola kim - october 2023

Alice Sola Kim's fiction has appeared in publications such as The Cut, Tin House, McSweeney's, Lightspeed, and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. She is a 2016 Whiting Award winner and has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

About her project: Short Fiction.

Sil Hamilton - october 2023

Sil Hamilton is AI researcher-in-residence at Hacks/Hackers, a network of journalists who rethink the future of news through talks, hackathons, and conferences. A machine learning researcher at McGill University exploring the intersection of AI and culture, Sil has published research at NLP conferences like ACL, AAAI, and COLING. His work exploring the limits of language models has been discussed by Wired, The Financial Times, and Le Devoir. Sil has given talks on AI and the newsroom at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard; the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Columbia; the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California; and The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin. Sil has consulted for The Associated Press on AI policies and serves as technology advisor at Health Tech Without Borders, a non-profit seeking to mitigate healthcare crises with digital tools.

Yilin Wang - November 2023

Yilin Wang (she/they) is a writer, poet, Chinese-English translator, and editor who lives on the unceded land of the Coast Salish peoples (Metro Vancouver, Canada). Her writing has appeared in Clarkesworld, Fantasy Magazine, The Malahat Review, Grain, CV2, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Toronto Star, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. Her translations have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Guernica, Room, Asymptote, LA Review of Books’ “China Channel,” Samovar, and the anthology The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories (TorDotCom 2022). She has won the Foster Poetry Prize, been nominated for an Aurora Award and Rhysling Award, been a two-time finalist for the Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction, and been longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize. Yilin has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and is a graduate of the 2021 Clarion West Writers Workshop.

About her project: Sparrow and Other Stories is a book-length short story collection that retells Chinese folktales through a feminist, queer, and Sino diaspora lens. The stories often experiment with genre and form and are inspired by various literary traditions such as ghost stories, chuanyue (time travel) narratives, wuxia fiction, and xianxia fiction.

Davin malasarn - December 2023

Davin Malasarn is a Los Angeles native and a biologist-turned-writer. He was a recipient of a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship and earned his M.F.A. in creative writing from Bennington College. His debut novel, tentatively titled THE OUTER COUNTRY, will be published in 2025 through One World/Random House. He has published short stories in the Los Angeles Review, Rosebud, Opium Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly and other journals in print and online.

About his project: Davin Malasarn’s THE OUTER COUNTRY is a multigenerational debut novel following two sisters’ migration from Phet Buri, Thailand, to Monterey Park, California, and their struggle under the same roof for the love of one sister’s son, Ben, who eventually charts his own path as he comes-of-age and grows into his queerness. It is a fiercely Thai—and American—story unpacking the betrayals we make for love and the debts that can never be repaid.

Welcoming our 2023 Summer Fellows for Writing Downtown

We’re thrilled to announce the next fellows for our Writer’s Residency in Downtown Las Vegas. We welcome our fellows Meredith Hambrock, A. Rey Pamatmat, and Sterling HolyWhiteMountain.

Fellows will spend a month in the vibrant heart of downtown Las Vegas, engaging with and becoming a part of the city’s thriving arts scene. The fellowship is designed to give talented writers and other creatives the space, time, and freedom to work on their longform projects, and the bibliophilic joy of living in a fully furnished apartment next to Las Vegas’ literary hub, The Writer’s Block bookstore.

Our apartment is in The Lucy, which also houses the Writer's Block. The Lucy is Beverly Rogers’ multi-use artist residency and complex, dedicated to fostering a creative community in Las Vegas.

Special thanks again to Nevada Humanities, UNLV, and private donors for helping bring these fellowships to life.

Meredith Hambrock - July 2023

Meredith Hambrock has worked in writing rooms on over 100 episodes of TV Comedy. She most recently served as Executive Story Editor on the sitcom “Corner Gas Animated” where she wrote for many hilarious Canadians. In 2022, her episode “A Lot to Be Desired” was nominated for a Leo Award. Her debut mystery novel, “Other People’s Secrets”, was published in September by Crooked Lane Books and was called “audacious” and “fabulous” by the New York Times Book Review, was one of The Rapsheet Mags Best Reads of 2022, was a Whodunit Mystery Bookstore Book of the Year Finalist, and was nominated for a Lefty Award in the Best Debut Mystery Category.

About her project: The project I'll be working on is a literary mystery/eco thriller called "Woman Found Floating" about the staff on a yacht crossing the Pacific Ocean and all that unfolds after they rescue a mysterious woman they find floating on a life raft in the middle of nowhere who claims her own sailboat was lost in a fire. As they get to know her, things are not as they appear and soon begin to suspect they were meant to find her.

a. Rey Pamatmat - August 2023

A. Rey Pamatmat’s plays include Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them (Actors Theatre of Louisville), after all the terrible things I do (Milwaukee Rep), House Rules (Ma-Yi), Thunder Above, Deeps Below (Second Generation), A Spare Me (Waterwell), and DEVIANT. His newest play, Safe, Three Queer Plays, follows the seismic changes in Queer America through a gay man of color’s life. Rey also recently contributed to a collaborative libretto for Desert In, which premiered on the Boston Lyric Opera’s operabox.tv. His work has been translated into Spanish and Russian, performed in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Russia, and published by Concord Theatricals, Playscripts, Cambria Press, and Vintage. Rey is the former co-director of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, and was a PoNY, Hodder, and Princess Grace Fellow.

About his project: Several things frustrated me about the American Theater pre-pandemic, and that frustration was amplified mid-pandemic, and then continued to make it difficult to write new work now that we’re post-(or-whenever-the-eff-we-are-now-)pandemic. One of the biggies, though? TRAUMA PORN. Not the thing in and of itself, but its relationship to our white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist (and beloved) American theater.

There’s a trend toward the production of work that requires BIPOC, women, queer, underprivileged, and otherwise disenfranchised playwrights to plumb the depths of their most personal injuries and put them on display. An audience — still predominantly wealthy, white, and seeking entertainment — watches these plays and delights over traumas so alien to them that they experience more pity than terror. They then depart the theater believing they’ve performed some great act of social justice in the refilling of their empathy gauge. However, all they’ve really done is had a nice, probably expensive, night out. Meanwhile, the joyful plays we’ve written, or plays we’ve written to our community for our community, get passed up for the next tale of woe. Dramatic Action as Intercourse + Catharsis as Orgasm + Self-aggrandizing Sympathy as Afterglow = Trauma Porn in the contemporary American theater! But then, with complete disregard for my annoyance at this exploitative structure, my dad went and died. My incarcerated dad, from whom I’ve been estranged for more than a decade, during a global pandemic, DIED. And now I can’t possibly write about anything else — how would I even begin? So it’s either write nothing at all or write about the depth of personal injury I suffered as his son.

Of course, I’ve written about my dad my entire life. Whether explicitly through absent, misguided, and downright villainous parents or implicitly through themes of thoughtless authority, of the necessity of found families, or of the attempt to connect despite irreconcilable difference, I’ve rarely not written about him. But now I am actually writing about my actual dad, without the safe distance mimesis and metaphor typically provide. What can I do, then, except write a play about my difficult relationships with both my dad and trauma porn?

I am not intent on taking anyone down in this exploration — neither my father nor the American Theater (or, for that matter, my family, exhibitionist playwrights, the empowered’s obsession with the disenfranchised’s pain, or even those sad social media messages about taking mental health breaks that simultaneously seek to avoid attention while seeking attention). Mostly, in the 15-ish pages I’ve already written, I’ve been confused and asking questions: who was my dad? Why couldn’t we get along? Do I pity him his imprisonment even though it was for a crime he DID commit? Why do people want to watch me figure this out? Why can’t I write something else? Do I want to write this and show it to people? Do I want to not want to write this? Who the hell am I if I do want to write it? Who the hell am I if I don’t want to write it, but I do anyway? And why do I turn to narrative to make sense of messy relationships and theatrical trends that I know do not make sense?

sterling holywhitemountain - september 2023

Sterling HolyWhiteMountain grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation. He holds a BA in English creative writing from the University of Montana and an MFA in fiction from the University of Iowa. He was also a James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin and more recently a Stegner fellow at Stanford University. His work has appeared in volumes 1 and 2 of Off the Path: An Anthology of 21st Century American Indian and Indigenous Writers, Montana Quarterly, ESPN.com., The Yellow Medicine Review, and The Atlantic. He's currently at work on a novel. He is an unrecognized citizen of the Blackfeet Nation.

About his project: A novel about blood quantum laws and the way they play out on the ground in Indian Country, between people from the same community.

Welcoming our 2023 Spring Fellows for Writing Downtown

We’re thrilled to announce the next fellows for our Writer’s Residency in Downtown Las Vegas. We welcome our fellows Esther Tsvayg, Marian Whitaker, and Gregor Langen.

Fellows will spend a month in the vibrant heart of downtown Las Vegas, engaging with and becoming a part of the city’s thriving arts scene. The fellowship is designed to give talented writers and other creatives the space, time, and freedom to work on their longform projects, and the bibliophilic joy of living in a fully furnished apartment next to Las Vegas’ literary hub, The Writer’s Block bookstore.

Our apartment is in The Lucy, which also houses the Writer's Block. The Lucy is Beverly Rogers’ multi-use artist residency and complex, dedicated to fostering a creative community in Las Vegas.

Special thanks again to Nevada Humanities, UNLV, and private donors for helping bring our fellowships to life.

Esther Tsvayg - ApriL 2023

Esther is a queer, Russian + Jewish multi-media storyteller born and raised in Brooklyn and based out of Los Angeles. She is a filmmaker, published historian, accredited fact checker, and has served in roles both in guaranteed income and as a research assistant for an acclaimed, best-selling fantasy novelist with a Paramount Pictures deal.

About her project: I will be working on a script about a dysfunctional, working class immigrant family that unravels during the observance of two major events— the oldest daughter marrying into a wealthy, educated family and the graduation of the youngest daughter from a prestigious university.

Marian Whitaker - May 2023

Marian recently graduated UCLA with an MFA in Screenwriting and currently works in production at Jimmy Kimmel Live. She has won grants for past writing projects, placed as a Semi-Finalist in the 2022 PAGE International Screenwriting Awards thriller genre, and currently aims to revise a novel manuscript she first wrote out while living out of a van in Australia.

About her project: I have a complete manuscript for a chick-lit mystery novel similar to Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. I have two mentors (authors experienced in the genre) who helped me develop a revision plan and offered to introduce me to agents once I revise the manuscript.

Currently, I live in LA with my partner and three cats. I also possess a vibrant (but distracting) social life. I believe the opportunity to work on my manuscript in a separate space for a couple weeks would be extremely productive.

gregor langen - May 2023

Gregor Langen is a writer from the Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota's MFA program, where he was awarded the Winifred Fellowship for Fiction. He lives in Saint Paul with his wife, the SF writer Sophie Wereley.

About his project: While in LV, I will be working furiously to finalize a third draft of my novel, tentatively titled VASELINE. Below is a short tag:

VASELINE is a dark comic novel that follows eleven-year-old Danny von Lawton and her sixty-seven-year-old ‘grandmamom’ over the course of one peewee hockey season. Set in the Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin, the novel’s central question concerns the shifting relationship between Danny and her grandmamom, and the old woman’s progressively fanatic belief that her Danny is a “conduit to God.” When a gruesome sports injury prompts Grandmamom to confront Danny with the “truth” of her prophetic powers, Danny must find a way to manifest God’s glory on Earth, or leave her grandmamom, her hockey team, and her small-town community to ruin.

Welcoming our 2023 Winter Fellows for Writing Downtown

We’re thrilled to announce the next fellows for our Writer’s Residency in Downtown Las Vegas. We welcome our fellows Cameron Woods, Aphelandra, and Joseph Lee.

Fellows will spend a month in the vibrant heart of downtown Las Vegas, engaging with and becoming a part of the city’s thriving arts scene. The fellowship is designed to give talented writers and other creatives the space, time, and freedom to work on their longform projects, and the bibliophilic joy of living in a fully furnished apartment next to Las Vegas’ literary hub, The Writer’s Block bookstore.

Our apartment is in The Lucy, which also houses the Writer's Block. The Lucy is Beverly Rogers’ multi-use artist residency and complex, dedicated to fostering a creative community in Las Vegas.

Special thanks again to Nevada Humanities, UNLV, and private donors for helping bring these fellowships to life.

Cameron Woods - January 2023

Cameron Woods is a recent graduate of Stanford University where he majored in African and African American Studies. He has completed a various amount of the pilots, mostly centered around the stories of his family's trials and tribulations throughout the generations. He loves sci-fi and fantasy and hopes to contribute to a new aesthetic of naturalistic fantasy with his future projects. When he's not writing, Cameron loves to perform stand up and write original songs with his friends. 

About his project: Cameron is writing a short film about a couple who can only meet up with each other when they are both dreaming. A fantasy/romance story about what it means to be with someone who might know you better than you know yourself. 

Aphelandra - February 2023

Aphelandra is an illustrator, designer, and publishing professional based in Chicago. In 2021 she made her debut as a children's picture book artist with "Shaped By Her Hands," which garnered numerous accolades. In a starred review, Kirkus called her work "earthy and elemental," and Publishers Weekly noted her "vibrant, subtly textured" artistry. Aphelandra has designed products for a wide array of companies, such as Hallmark Cards, Penguin Random House, and Disney. She enjoys using her creative skills to tell meaningful stories and help people connect with one another.

About her project: I will be working on new pieces for my illustration portfolio and doing some sketching and rewriting for my manuscript "The Dragon Who Ate the Moon," a children's picture book.

Joseph Lee - March 2023

Joseph Lee is a member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) on Martha’s Vineyard. Born and raised in Massachusetts, he now lives in Queens, New York. Joseph reports on Indigenous affairs and the environment for Grist and teaches creative writing at Mercy College. Joseph was a 2020 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers' Workshop. His essays and journalism have been published in The Guardian, BuzzFeed News, The Verge, Tin House, Electric Literature, Catapult, High Country News, Outside, and more.

About his project: I will be working on a nonfiction book about Martha's Vineyard, the Wampanoag tribe, and Indigenous identity.

Welcoming our 2022 Fall Fellows for Writing Downtown

We’re thrilled to announce the next fellows for our Writer’s Residency in Downtown Las Vegas. We welcome our fellows Jean Kyoung Frazier, Kiara Gomez, Adrian L. Jawort, and Jerome A. Parker.

Fellows will spend a month in the vibrant heart of downtown Las Vegas, engaging with and becoming a part of the city’s thriving arts scene. The fellowship is designed to give talented writers and other creatives the space, time, and freedom to work on their longform projects, and the bibliophilic joy of living in a fully furnished apartment next to Las Vegas’ literary hub, The Writer’s Block bookstore.

Our apartment is in The Lucy, which also houses the Writer's Block. The Lucy is Beverly Rogers’ multi-use artist residency and complex, dedicated to fostering a creative community in Las Vegas.

Special thanks again to Nevada Humanities, UNLV, and private donors for helping bring these fellowships to life.

JEAN KYOUNG FRAZIER - OCTOBER 2022

Jean Kyoung Frazier lives in Brooklyn. Pizza Girl was her debut novel. She also writes for television.

About her project: My second novel. It's a stoner tragedy and part of it takes place in Las Vegas.

KIARA GOMEZ - OCTOBER 2022

Kiara Gomez is a recent Harvard College graduate with a degree in Social Anthropology and Government. Kiara has been writing speculative fiction since she can remember and has recently begun screenwriting. When she’s not reading, writing, or watching stories, she can be found admiring multimillion-dollar homes on Zillow or enjoying Southern California’s perennial good weather at the beach.

About her project: I will be drafting a Young Adult fantasy novel, which mythologizes family stories from Mexico and my own experiences growing up in the United States.

ADRIAN L. JAWORT - NOVEMBER 2022

Adrian L. Jawort is a Northern Cheyenne fiction writer and journalist based in Billings, Montana. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, and Indian Country Today. She is the author of Moonrise Falling, a horror novel, and the editor of and contributor to Off the Path volumes I and II, a fiction anthology featuring indigenous writers from around the globe. She has a collection of short stories called In the Shadow of Custer and is currently completing her novel based on her experiences of being transgender in a red state.

About her project: I will completing my novel based on my experiences of coming out as an Indigenous transgender woman in a red state. It is a very deep psychological dive on something I've never seen really addressed in the way I am doing.

JEROME A. PARKER - DECEMBER 2022

Jerome A. Parker is a published writer for the stage and screen with a focus on musical theater as a composer, lyricist, and librettist. From New York City, his works champion black and brown heroes as they wrestle through the baggage of their histories. Highlighted works for the stage and screen include BLISS: A SOLDIER'S TALE (Public Theater); LIKE JOHNNY IN THE DARK (Dramatist Guild); KAYA: TASTE OF PARADISE (New York Film Academy); and BLACK QUEEN SCREEN TESTS (The Tank NYC).

Currently, as a collaborative librettist with Experiments in Opera NY, his commissioned pieces in the epic, episodic EVERYTHING FOR DAWN, are now streaming on PBS AllARTS. And the EP recording of STRANGE FELLOWE: LOVE, his collaboration with composers Nick DePinna and Hitomi Oba, featuring Grammy Winner Kristolyn Lloyd, will be available across all music streaming platforms in 2023. As a dramaturg he's developing 2 new musicals: EllaRose Chary and Brandon J. Gwinn's QUEER. PEOPLE. TIME., and CATARACT HOUSE with The Becton International Black Theater and Arts.

An alumnus of Williams College (BA Theatre), The Juilliard School (Production/Costumes), UCLA School of Theater, Film, Television and New Media (MFA Playwriting), the Public Theater’s EWG; and his fellowships include the Dramatist Guild, MacDowell, American Lyric Theater, New York Stage and Film, Freedom Train Productions, Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and the Writers Guild of America East.

About his project: Currently he's developing his opera trilogy FREIDA, as librettist and composer. Originally commissioned by Intiman Theater, FREIDA has been developed through fellowships, readings and workshops at New York Stage and Film, MacDowell, Dramatist Guild, National Black Theater, and the Obsidian Theater Festival (recently featured in American Theatre Magazine). FREIDA tells the story of a young girl, Freida, whose father is murdered by a police officer in front of her eyes and the revenge seeking woman she becomes as a result. Taking place between 1989 and 2015, in the fictional, small city of Homestead, CT, FREIDA's lens explores race relations and police militarization in urban areas as well as Black Rage. While in residence with Plympton, Jerome will compose the third and final part, FREIDA: BLACK, solidifying a libretto which plunges our heroine into a spiritual realm with the dead.

Welcoming our 2022 Summer Fellows for Writing Downtown and First Silberstein Fellows

We’re thrilled to announce the next fellows for our Writer’s Residency in Downtown Las Vegas. We welcome our first two Silberstein Fellows, Lue Palmer and Manjula Menon. Our third fellow for the summer will be Jean Kyoung Frazier.

Fellows will spend a month in the vibrant heart of downtown Las Vegas, engaging with and becoming a part of the city’s thriving arts scene. The fellowship is designed to give talented writers and other creatives the space, time, and freedom to work on their longform projects, and the bibliophilic joy of living in a fully furnished apartment next to Las Vegas’ literary hub, The Writer’s Block bookstore.

Our apartment is in The Lucy, which also houses the Writer's Block. The Lucy is Beverly Rogers’ multi-use artist residency and complex, dedicated to fostering a creative community in Las Vegas.

The Silberstein Fellowship was created to support emerging speculative fiction writers, sponsored by author Eric Silberstein. Eric is an engineer from Harvard turned fiction writer, and his exciting debut The Insecure Mind of Sergei Kraev, set in the not-too-distant future, imagines a harrowing technological future where neural implants have become widespread.

Special thanks again to Nevada Humanities, UNLV, Eric Silberstein, and private donors for helping bring these fellowships to life.

Lue Palmer - July 2022

Lue is a writer of literary fiction, non-fiction and poetry on Black relationships to nature, the fantastic in the everyday, and the retelling of history among other things. Lue Palmer is a child of the Jamaican diaspora stretching across Canada, the UK, US and the Caribbean. With a bush country heritage, Lue was fed on stories and raised by a river in the north. Published in North America and the Caribbean, Lue is a Bread Loaf Writing Conference alumni, and a Banff Centre Writers’ Studio Artist in Residence alumni.

About their project: Their first full-length work, The Hungry River, follows a woman who loses her child and climbs into the sky to slap God. Set on the backdrop of climate change, and the fight of a community against environmental racism—A Hungry River chronicles a love song between nature and Black communities over 250 years and into the future.

Manjula Menon - August

Manjula Menon is a writer of literary and speculative fiction. Her awards include a Yaddo Fellowship and a Breadloaf Writers Conference“waitership”. Her short stories have been published in Pleiades, Tampa Review and Southern Humanities Review, among others. Her most recent publication is a story/recipe in the forthcoming collection of fantastical mixology, Strange Libations: Dark Cocktails from the editors of ApexMagazine.

About her project: I will be working on revising and polishing my first novel.

Christopher “C-Bone Jones” - September

Christopher “C-Bone Jones” was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. At the age of 16, he experienced a life-threating car accident which propelled him head first through the windshield. After plastic surgery, he was ashamed of the numerous facial scars resulting from the car accident but understood he was blessed to still be alive. C-Bone became determined to share his story in the hopes of inspiring someone else to embrace life and all that comes along with its experiences. A natural performer, he believes it’s his life experiences and triumph which inspires him to share his story through film, poetry or spoken-word artistry. C-Bone became a student of his craft. After studying film, television production and mass communication at Tennessee State University, he returned to his native Los Angeles to start a full service production company. On a leap of faith, C-Bone invested his savings into his dream: Bread N Butter Productions.

C-Bone fell in love with the art of spoken word the very first time he stepped on stage. He was happy to have found a creative platform to display his skills. The feeling was euphoric. Amazed at how his natural talent of word play could captivate an audience, he became inspired to continue writing. His first performance would go on to be one of many to come.

A lyrical wordsmith, C-Bone Jones is a twenty year veteran of the spoken-word industry. Best known for his closing moniker, “Ya’ll, like that?” His iconic phrase has become synonymous with the closing of a poet’s performance throughout the United States. A seasoned industry veteran, he has been lauded as the official Poet for Tupac’s Legendary Outlawz. In addition, he has had the opportunity to share the stage with such legendary greats such as: Malcolm Jamal Warner, Kim Fields, Teena Marie, Jessica Care Moore, Dead Prez, Georgia Me, Saul Williams and Mack 10, Jurassic 5, and Jon., B. C-Bone has appeared as a weekly feature on LA’s KJLH 102.3 FM, his work has been captured on BET’s Life Tracks and Russell Simmons’s HBO Def Poetry Jam. He has recorded numerous Spoken Word c.d.s and has directed several Spoken Word themed narrative short films. A 2010 Film School graduate, C-Bone remains focused on the development of new ideation and the production of full length feature films as well as cornering the market on Spoken Word themed narrative shorts. C-Bone is passionate about new projects such as his first digital CD entitled Mont Blanc Music as well his #SpitAVerseChangeALife clothing line and the continued movement towards the development of sound spoken word projects that evoke thought and change lives.

About his project: Writers Block Sin City is a docu-film which takes a detailed look into the spoken word poetry scene in Las Vegas. We discuss the many obstacles poets have to overcome to be a successful poet for example, Venue Etiquette, Poets going Mainstream and the Poet vs the Promoter.  

helen shewolfe tseng - September

Helen Shewolfe Tseng is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, writer, and witch born to Taiwanese immigrants in the Deep South and currently based in San Francisco. Their work is influenced by ancestral and diasporic relationships to place, folk spiritual practices, interspecies collaborations, trickster archetypes, and neurodivergence, and has taken the forms of drawings, paintings, books and zines, writing, rituals, talismans, talks, workshops, installations, participatory works, computational works, and combinations of the above. Previously, Helen was a 2022 Artist in Residence at Montalvo Arts Center, a 2018-2019 Fellow at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the 2019 Designer in Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts, and the illustrator and co-author of The Astrological Grimoire (Chronicle Books). For more signs of life, see shewolfe.co and instagram.com/wolfchirp.

Welcoming our 2022 Spring Fellows for Writing Downtown Residency in Las Vegas

We’re thrilled to announce the next fellows for our Writer’s Residency in Downtown Las Vegas: Emperatriz Ung and Mahogany L. Browne. We also welcome guests Jhon Valdes and Christine Utz.

Fellows will spend a month in the vibrant heart of downtown Las Vegas, engaging with and becoming a part of the city’s thriving arts scene. The fellowship is designed to give talented writers and other creatives the space, time, and freedom to work on their longform projects, and the bibliophilic joy of living in a fully furnished apartment next to Las Vegas’ literary hub, The Writer’s Block bookstore.

Our apartment is in The Lucy, which also houses the Writer's Block. The Lucy is Beverly Rogers’ multi-use artist residency and complex, dedicated to fostering a creative community in Las Vegas.

Special thanks again to Nevada Humanities, UNLV, and private donors for helping bring these fellowships to life.

Emperatriz UnG - April 2022

Emperatriz Ung (she/they) is a Chinese-Colombian game designer, writer, & educator from the American Southwest. Emperatriz has been awarded fellowships, scholarships, and residences from the Asian American Writers' Workshop, Millay Arts, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Foundation, Kundiman, and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. When she's not making games, she's at work on her memoir. Find her on Twitter at @mprtrzng.

About her project: Emperatriz will be restructuring, remixing, and revising her book-length creative nonfiction project. With prose, images, and poetry, the book chronicles a survivor’s efforts to attain stability in the aftermath of childhood abuse. This memoir-in-progress scrutinizes the precarious role of victims as witnesses required to testify in criminal trials, and considers alternative methods of trauma recovery outside of inpatient hospitalization and the standardized practices of psychiatric care.

Mahogany L. Browne - May 2022

Mahogany L. Browne is the Executive Director of JustMedia, a media literacy initiative designed to support the groundwork of criminal justice leaders and community members. This position is informed by her career as a writer, organizer, & educator. Browne has received fellowships from Agnes Gund, Air Serenbe, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research & Rauschenberg. She is the author of recent works: Chlorine Sky, Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, Woke Baby, & Black Girl Magic. Browne is the founder of the diverse lit initiative, Woke Baby Book Fair; and is excited about her latest poetry collection. I Remember Death By Its Proximity to What I Love is a book-length poem responding to the impact of mass incarceration on women and children). She is based in Brooklyn and is the first-ever Poet-in-Residence at the Lincoln Center.​

About her project: Complete my third YA novel & editing my latest adult poetry collection.

JhOn Valdes (Guest) - June 2022

Jhon Valdes Klinger is an Afro-Latinx, New York City raised, Colombian writer, filmmaker, and educator. He received an MFA from The New School's Creative Writing Program. He worked as a teaching artist at UrbanWordNYC. Jhon's writing can be found in Acentos Review, Vagabond City Literary Journal, 12th Street Journal, and Monsters of the Bronx. He recently relocated to Oakland, California, where he teaches middle school English. He is working on a magical realism/horror novel.

About his project: During the residency, I will be finalizing my first novel. My manuscript is a coming-of-age story that explores African diaspora trauma in Latin America, immigration reform, and the effect of PTSD on a queer young man, through a magical realism/horror lens.

Christine Utz (Guest) - June 2022

Christine Utz is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Originally from Florida, she has spent time teaching, writing, and editing in New York City, Iowa City, and most recently Minneapolis, MN. In 2016 she was awarded a fellowship to teach in New Zealand at Victoria University of Wellington’s International Institute of Modern Letters. Her fiction has appeared in Saw Palm, Turbine | Kapohau, MARY, Joyland, BorderSenses, and Flock. She's also a contributing author to Occupying Wall Street: The Inside Story of an Action that Changed America. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband, two cats, and six chickens on an urban permaculture experiment.

About her project: I'll be wrapping up edits on SHADY GROVE, a speculative cli-fi novel about finding connection and meaning in a changing world.

Welcoming our 2022 Winter Fellows for Writing Downtown Residency in Las Vegas

We’re thrilled to announce the next fellows for our Writer’s Residency in Downtown Las Vegas: Demian DinéYazhi ́, Zin E. Rocklyn, and Lindsey Toya-Tosa.

Fellows will spend a month in the vibrant heart of downtown Las Vegas, engaging with and becoming a part of the city’s thriving arts scene. The fellowship is designed to give talented writers and other creatives the space, time, and freedom to work on their longform projects, and the bibliophilic joy of living in a fully furnished apartment next to Las Vegas’ literary hub, The Writer’s Block bookstore.

Our apartment is in The Lucy, which also houses the Writer's Block. The Lucy is Beverly Rogers’ multi-use artist residency and complex, dedicated to fostering a creative community in Las Vegas.

Special thanks again to Nevada Humanities, UNLV, and private donors for helping bring these fellowships to life.

Demian DineYazhi - January 2022

Demian DinéYazhi ́ (born 1983) is a Portland-based Diné transdisciplinary artist, poet, and curator born to the clans Naasht’ézhí Tábaahá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) and Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water). Their practice is a regurgitation of purported Decolonial praxis informed by the overaccumulative and exploitative nature of hetero cis gender supremacist normativity. They are a survivor of attempted european genocide, forced assimilation, colonial manipulation, sexual & gender violence, capitalist sabotage, and hypermarginalization in a colonized country that refuses to center its politics and philosophies around the Indigenous Peoples whose Land it wrongfully occupies and refuses to give back. They live and work in a post-post-apocalyptic world unafraid to fail. @heterogeneoushomosexual

About their project: I will be working on developing new writing for my next book project, as well as working and presenting work in support of my latest publication, WE LEFT THEM NOTHING. I will be utilizing video to create work as an extension of WE LEFT THEM NOTHING, and read from the book as well.

I'm currently beginning to think about content and themes for my next book, so utilizing the space will allow me the space to think through and begin dreaming of what this new work will look like.

Zin E. Rocklyn - February 2022

Zin E. Rocklyn is a contributor to Bram Stoker-nominated and This is Horror Award-winning Nox Pareidolia, Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters, Brigands: A Blackguards Anthology, and Forever Vacancy anthologies and Weird Luck Tales No. 7 zine. Their story "Summer Skin" in the Bram Stoker-nominated anthology Sycorax's Daughters received an honorable mention for Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year, Volume Ten. Zin contributed the nonfiction essay “My Genre Makes a Monster of Me” to Uncanny Magazine’s Hugo Award-winning Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction. Their short story "Night Sun" and flash fiction "teatime" was published on Tor.com. Zin is a 2017 VONA and 2018 Viable Paradise graduate. You can find them on Twitter @intelligentwat.

About their project: I will be working on my Dark Fantasy novel which is a riff on Cinderella if she were a Black Queer mercenary who was betrayed by her father.

Lindsey Toya-tosa - March 2022

I'm Lindsey Toya-Tosa from the Pueblo of Jemez. I graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts with my bachelor of arts degree in creative writing in 2019. Currently I am an MFA student at IAIA where I'm working on my thesis. I also like to write fiction and poetry. When I'm not writing I love spending time with my family as well as gardening, sewing, and helping my mom with her small business.

About her project: I am in the last year of receiving my MFA in creative writing with an emphasis on creative nonfiction so I will be working on my thesis. Which is a requirement for graduation but it will also be a completed manuscript that I can publish if I choose to do so. I'll be working on a series of essays for my thesis.

Plympton with Amazon Original Stories Announce Black Stars: A Galaxy of New Worlds, a collection of Afro-centric stories

Written by Saschael Carter, Writing Atlas Fellow

Black Stars spotted in Times Square.

Science fiction helps us examine familiar situations outside of a familiar world. It challenges us to consider what futures may be possible if things were to change. 

These stories featuring Black characters use futuristic and fantastical elements that help liberate the racial imagination. Together with Amazon Original Stories, Plympton sought to bring forth stories by Black authors that place Black characters in various unusual universes and environments. These stories help us gain an understanding of the questions: How does history follow us, and dictate our reality? What role does race have in futuristic settings? In what ways do Black people’s understanding of their function in society change in fantasy settings?

We asked six award-winning Black authors to forge their own Afro-centric realities. Black Stars is a collection of six exciting, mind-bending, and thought-provoking stories that examine how Black existence changes depending on surrounding circumstances.

“2043, A Merman I Should Turn To Be” by World Fantasy Award-winning author Nisi Shawl is a short story about a man and a woman traveling to their new underwater home. In this future, Black and other people of color are given the option to buy body modification upgrades in order to transform into merpeople. As merpeople, they receive 40 acres of underwater land meant to function as reparations.

Science fiction and fantasy writer Nnedi Okorafor in “The Black Pages” tells the story of a man visiting his home city of Timbuktu during an Al-Qaeda attack. His entire town is taken under Al-Qaeda's control in a matter of a few months. Libraries and books are burning, the city’s wifi and internet are no longer available. The population believes they are helpless. Only a powerful supernatural being can rescue their home. 

“The Visit” by Americanah author Chimamanda Adichie takes place in a world where gender role expectations are reversed; women are the breadwinners while their husbands stay home to take care of the children. Two male childhood best friends who once shared similar aspirations for their lives reunite after ten years apart. They reflect on their disparate experiences of living under a powerful matriarchal society. 

In “These Alien Skies,” author of Scarlet Odyssey and Requiem Moon C.T. Rwizi details the story of two pilots who crash land on Malcolm X-b, a new planet where they are to collect data on the planet’s ability to support life. Soon after their landing, the pilots are greeted by the planet’s inhabitants, who must decide if they want to kill the foreigners or spare their lives.

“Clap Back” by six-time novelist Nalo Hopkinson is centered around two women within the same family, generations apart. Both women have the magical ability to perform hoodoo. They use their powers to call attention to the injustices Black people have faced in the past and continue to face in their present societies.

Victor LaValle is the creator and writer of the comic book Destroyer. In “We Travel The Spaceways,” he tells the tale of a man walking through life alone, who is on a mission to free Black Americans from emotional slavery. He is treated terribly by every person he encounters — until he meets a transgender runaway who joins him on his quest. They form an unbreakable bond, and she helps him transcend his current reality.

Each story in Black Stars is available for purchase in eBook and audiobook format and free to download for all Amazon Prime members. It is the latest collection of stories Plympton has contributed to in collaboration with Amazon Original Stories. Previous collections include Currency, a collection about wealth, class, competition and collapse; Faraway, a collection of fairy tales for the here and now; Hush, a collection about the end of truth; and Warmer, a collection of climate fiction.