We’re thrilled to announce the next four fellows for our Writer’s Residency in Downtown Las Vegas: Dominica Phetteplace, Jane Pek, Kit Yan, Christopher Molnar, and Alex Jennings.
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.
This year’s apartment will be 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 the Amazon Literary Partnership, the New York Public Library, and private donors for helping bring these fellowships to life.
Dominica Phetteplace - Jan 2021
Dominica Phetteplace writes poetry and fiction. Her work has appeared in Asimov's, Zyzzyva, Clarkesworld and Lightspeed. Her honors include a Pushcart Prize, a MacDowell Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Award and a Steinbeck Fellowship at San Jose State University.
Jane Pek - FEB 2021
Jane Pek was born and raised in Singapore, and now lives in New York. During the day (and sometimes night) she works as a lawyer at an investment company. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Brooklyn Review, Witness, and Conjunctions. Her debut novel The Verifiers is forthcoming from Vintage in 2022. She enjoys picking up different martial arts without being very good at any of them, reading coming-of-age novels, watching contemporary theatre, and cycling around the city in search of superlative almond croissants.
About her project: I will be revising a draft of my second novel, tentatively titled The Immersionist. The Immersionist is a literary science-fiction/wuxia quest narrative, set in a futuristic Singapore and a history-on-steroids version of medieval China, that explores class, migration and what it means to be human in an era of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and vast economic inequality. There will be swordfighting.
Philiane Phang - March 2021
Philiane Phang is a writer and director based in New York. She was recognized as the recipient of the Film Independent Ammon Foundation Fellowship at the Spirit Awards and awarded IFP’s Inaugural Phosphate Prize for a screenplay with a strong and complex female lead. Her short film, Gubagude Ko, starring Academy Award winner, Mahershala Ali, and developed with the support of American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women is currently airing on HBO. In 2017, Conde Nast and Indigenous Media commissioned her to write and direct a proof of concept for a TV series, The Row. Her feature project, The Space Between, was chosen to participate in Sundance Screenwriters Intensive, Sundance Producing Lab, Film Independent Screenwriting Lab, Film Independent Directing Lab, Berlinale Talents and Co-Production Market, and IFP’s - No Borders Co-Production Market. Philiane graduated from Rutgers University with a Juris Doctorate.
About her project: I am adapting Robert McCammon's short story 'The Deep End' into a feature film. The story follows a grief-stricken father who descends into madness after his son's mysterious death.
Christopher Molnar - April 2021
Chris Molnar is co-founder of the Writer's Block bookstore in Las Vegas. He is also founder and editorial director of Archway Editions, the new literary imprint of powerHouse Books, distributed by Simon & Schuster, that is publishing authors such as Ishmael Reed, Alice Notley and Paul Schrader.
He is a graduate of the Columbia University School of the Arts MFA program in fiction, editor of Unpublishable and the upcoming Archways anthologies (and organizer of their corresponding event series), and his writing has appeared in Vol. 1 Brooklyn and The Shadow, among others.
About his project: My novel, Heaven’s Oblivion, is about the notorious model and stalker Nell Theobald. Perhaps most well known for being mauled by a lion during the 1966 International Automobile Show in New York City, she subsequently used the settlement money to fly around the world following the opera singer Birgit Nilsson. Inspired in part by the obscure novel Of Lena Geyer, which features a mysterious woman in black who always sits in the front row of an opera singer's performances, Theobald went beyond obsession into theft and forgery, sneaking into Nilsson's hotel rooms to steal mementos and letterhead, writing letters to herself as Nilsson using Nilsson’s stationary and with an eerily accurate eye towards her grammatical and linguistic tics.
Alex Jennings - May 2021
Alex Jennings is a teacher, author, and performer living in New Orleans. His writing has appeared in strangehorizons.com, podcastle, The Peauxdunque Review, Obsidian Lit, the Locus-Award-winning Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler, as well as numerous anthologies including Stories for Chip, New Suns: Speculative Fiction by People of Color, and Spicy Slipstream Stories. His debut collection, Here I Come and Other Stories was released by Fight On! Publications in 2012. He was born in Wiesbaden (Germany) and raised in Gaborone (Botswana), Paramaribo (Surinam), and Tunis (Tunisia) as well as the United States. Find out more at alexjennings.net.
About his project: Currently at work on an SF novella, multiple short stories/poetry, and an as-yet-untitled novel project which is under contract with Orbit/Redhook.
This novel is a sort of blaxploitation Pippi Longstocking musical set in New Orleans. The next novel slated is currently called All The Scenes, and it set in an alterrnate 90s Tunisia at the American Cooperative School while war rages elsewhere in the solar system.
Kit Yan
Kit Yan is a Yellow American New York based artist, born in Enping, China, and raised in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Kit is a Vivace Award winner for big ideas in musical theater, a 2020 Musical Theater Factory Makers Fellow, a 2020 Playwright’s Center fellow, 2020 Company One/Pao Arts Fellow, 2020 Lincoln Center Writer in residence, and former Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow and MacDowell Fellow.
Their work has been produced by the American Repertory Theater, the Smithsonian, NAMT, Musical Theater Factory, the New York Musical Festival, Mixed Blood, and Diversionary Theater.
About their project: T(estoserone): a new musical. Interstate: a new musical.
Update: Due to Hawaii Border restrictions during the pandemic, Kit was unable to join us for March 2021, as previously scheduled.
Individual fellowships are made possible with support from the Amazon Literary Partnership, Submittable, the New York Public Library’s digital short story collection, and private donors. If your organization would like to partner with Plympton to sponsor a fellowship, please reach out to writingdowntown@plympton.com.
To find out even more, visit http://www.writingdowntown.com