FRANCES ARPAIA (Brooklyn, NY)
FELLOW | FILM

Frances Arpaia (she/her) is a queer trans woman who lives in Brooklyn. She sort of has a masters degree in Screen Studies from Brooklyn College and occasionally works as researcher, recently on the documentary Disclosure. Most of the time she is busy making her own films which explore everything from queer life in Brooklyn and the struggles of community and connection, to longform works including experimental performance pieces and video-art shitposts. Apparently people even watch them.

ANGELO MADSEN MINAX (Brooklyn, NY)
MENTOR | FILM

Angelo Madsen Minax (he/him), works in film and video, sound and music, text, and media installation. His projects draw on auto-ethnography, psychodynamics, and phenomenology. They are mostly about love and death, rendered through personal and collective histories in art, punk, queer, rural, and activist cultures. Madsen's works have shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Leslie Lohman Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Tom of Finland Institute, Anthology Film Archives, the British Film Institute, KurzFilm Hamburg, the European Media Art Festival, Ann Arbor, Berwick, Alchemy, Outfest, Newfest, Frameline, and others. His new film North by Current was supported by the Sundance Institute and the LEF Foundation and premiered at Berlinale and the Tribeca Film Festival in 2021. Madsen is currently an Assistant Professor of Time-Based Media at the University of Vermont.

XOÀI PHAM (Brooklyn, NY)
FELLOW | FILM

Xoài Pham (she/her) is a Vietnamese trans woman descended from a long legacy of warriors, healers, and shamans. Her family arrived in California as refugees after the United States pillaged Southeast Asia. Her life’s work is in dreaming new futures where we are all limitless, and she makes those dreams a reality through storytelling. She is currently the Digital Program Managar of Transgender Law Center, Trans Subject Editor of Autostraddle, and National Communications Strategist with Mekong NYC and the Southeast Asian Freedom Network. Her work has appeared in POETRY, the Offing, Teen Vogue, Esquire, and Harper's Bazaar, among others.

TOURMALINE (Brooklyn, NY)
MENTOR | FILM

Tourmaline (she/her), is an activist, filmmaker, and writer. Her work highlights the capacity of Black queer and trans people and communities to make and transform worlds. In her films, Tourmaline creates dreamlike portraits of people whose stories tell the history of New York City, including gay and trans liberation activists, drag queens, and queer icons Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera (Happy Birthday Marsha, co-directed with Sasha Wortzel, 2018), Miss Major (The Personal Things, 2016), and Egyptt LaBeija (Atlantic is a Sea of Bones, 2017). Recent screenings of Tourmaline’s work have been presented at venues including BFI Flare, London; Seattle Transgender Film Festival; Portland Art Museum; New Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Brooklyn Museum.

JOIE LOU SHAKUR (Durham, NC)
FELLOW | FILM

Joie Lou Shakur (they/them) is a Black Trans immigrant from Jamaica. They are a Southern storyteller, medicine maker, and village organizer living in rural NC. Joie Lou (@joieloushakur) is the founding director of House of Pentacles, a Film Fellowship Program and Production House focused on cultural organizing and narrative power led by and for Black Trans and Gender Non-Conforming people. In addition to their work with House of P, Joie Lou facilitates healing circles for Black folks at the intersection of sexual trauma and racial violence. When they’re not building Black futures, Black Trans possibilities, or behind a camera, you can find Joie Lou playing in soil or clay, practicing for karaoke, or cooking traditional Jamaican Sunday dinners on a Tuesday afternoon.

SILAS HOWARD (Los Angeles, CA)
MENTOR | FILM

Silas Howard (he/him) started in filmmaking with his first feature By Hook or By Crook (Sundance 2002), made with Harry Dodge. His credits include Pose, Dickinson, Transparent, This is Us, High Maintenance, Everything's Gonna Be Okay, and his most recent feature A Kid Like Jake (Sundance 2018). He was a founding member of the seminal queer punk band Tribe 8 and co-founder of San Francisco legendary cafe and performance space Red Dora's Bearded Lady. You can learn more at Howard’s website.

JL AKAGI (Brooklyn, NY)
FELLOW | LITERATURE

JL Akagi (she/her) is a Japanese American writer who writes about what scares her. Her experimental writing seeks to blend elements of Japanese folklore and narrative structures into Western genres. She is particularly interested in queer possibility and the ways that radical, joyful queerness can provide antidotes for suffering. She received her MA from University of Colorado, and her MFA from the New School. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons.

TORREY PETERS (New York/Vermont)
MENTOR | LITERATURE

Torrey Peters (she/her) is the author of the novel Detransition, Baby, a national bestseller, longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, and currently in development for a TV adaptation. She also wrote the novellas Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones and The Masker. Torrey rides a pink motorcycle and splits her time between Brooklyn and an off-grid cabin in Vermont.

CLARISSA BROOKS (Atlanta, GA)
FELLOW | LITERATURE

Clarissa Brooks (she/her) is a black queer writer, journalist, and cultural worker. Proudly born in Charlotte, NC, Clarissa has been based in Atlanta, GA for the last five years. She is a proud black southerner and will argue with anyone about the cultural importance of Bojangles any day. She is a community organizer of 6+ years. Clarissa uses a black queer feminist lens to approach her cultural criticism and investigative reporting. She often writes about hip-hop, HBCUs, black political power, and the varying cruel conditions of black women and girls survive every day. Clarissa has written for Rolling Stone, Harpers Bazaar, Teen Vogue, NPR, The Oxford American, and Paper Magazine to name a few. She is a former member of BYP100 and the current program director at Just Media. She is a 2018 graduate of Spelman College.

SAEED JONES (Columbus, OH)
MENTOR | LITERATURE

Saeed Jones (he/him) is a writer whose latest memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives, charts a course across the American landscape, drawing readers into the author’s boyhood and adolescence—into tumultuous relationships with family, friends, and strangers. The book won the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction and the 2020 Stonewall Book Award/Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award. Jones also wrote the poetry collection Prelude to Bruise,winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award.

KEI KAIMANA (Ann Arbor, MI)
FELLOW | LITERATURE

Kei Kaimana (they/them) is a disabled nonbinarytrans writer, independent scholar, and artist of Kanaka Maoli and Black descent. They work across form, building stories for BIPOC futures in which our multidimensionality is central and we are well. Kei lives in a sickening body on stolen land, where their solo practice is punctuated by virtual workshops, meetups, and hangouts. Kei has been a fellow at Pink Door (2016, 2019), Fortify Detroit (2018), Open Mouth (2019), and In Surreal Life (2021), and an inaugural virtual artist resident for Situated Critical Race and Media (SCRAM) Collective in 2020. Their writing is published or forthcoming in Foglifter, DSQ: Disability Studies Quarterly, ENTROPY, Feminist Studies, and elsewhere.

ALEXIS DE VEAUX (New Orleans, LA)
MENTOR | LITERATURE

Alexis De Veaux (she/her) is a black queer feminist writer of fiction, nonfiction and poetry whose work in multiple genres is nationally and internationally known. De Veaux was the 2019 Distinguished Speaker for the Anne Frank Project Social Justice Festival, an honor bestowed on her by SUNY Buffalo State College. Born and raised in Harlem, New York City, she is co-Founder (with poet Kathy Engel) of The Center for Poetic Healing, a project of Lyrical Democracies, and the Flamboyant Ladies Theatre Company (with Gwendolen Hardwick).

JOSE ESTEBAN ABAD (San Francisco, CA)
FELLOW | PERFORMANCE

jose esteban abad (they/them) is an Afro-Carribean Filipinx multidisciplinary choreographer, DJ, and curator based in unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Territory (San Francisco). Their work explores the complexities of identity at the intersection of gender, sexuality, class, race, and geography. Rooted in collaboration and improvisation as tools of resistance and liberation, abad’s work centers QTBIPOC experimental collective process-based practices of becoming and remembering to highlight the most intelligent technologies that exist in this world - our bodies, ancestral wisdom, and nature. They have held residencies and produced work with CounterPulse, the Joe Goode Annex, Paul Dresher Studio, Highways Performance Space, and Hope Mohr Dance; They have also performed and taught nationally and internationally in the Philippines, Mexico, and Europe.

WILL RAWLS (New York, NY)
MENTOR | PERFORMANCE

Will Rawls (he/him) is a multi-disciplinary choreographer working in dance, video and installation across theaters, galleries and museums. He uses performance as a vehicle for reformulating perceptions and embodiments of Blackness in contemporary life. He has presented work at the MoMA, Performa 15, Danspace Project, The Chocolate Factory Theater, and the 10th Berlin Biennale among others. He is a recipient of a Herb Alpert Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2021 Creative Capital Award, a United States Artists Grant and a National Dance Project Award.

MARIAM BAZEED (Brooklyn, NY)
FELLOW | PERFORMANCE

Mariam Bazeed (they/them) is an Egyptian immigrant, writer, spoken word artist, performance artist, stage actor, and cook living in Brooklyn. An alliteration-leaning writer of prose, poetry, plays, and pantry lists, their work across genres has been published in print and online, and their plays have been performed in festivals in the United States and abroad. Mariam is currently at work on a book-length erasure of The Arab Mind, written by the accomplished racist Raphael Patai; The Sunshine School Songbook, a solo cabaret sponsored by late-stage capitalism and the algorithms of Gulf Labor dystopias; and on the second draft of their so-faggy-it’s-in-the-title! play, faggy faafi Cairo boy.

MORGAN BASSICHIS (New York, NY)
MENTOR | PERFORMANCE

Morgan Bassichis (they/them) is a comedian and musician who makes solo and collaborative performances that draw on historical archives, collective singing, and something like self-help. Recent shows include Nibbling the Hand that Feeds Me(Whitney Museum, NYC, 2019), Klezmer for Beginners (Abrons Arts Center, NYC, 2019), Damned If You Duet (The Kitchen, NYC, 2018), and The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions: The Musical(New Museum, NYC, 2017). Their live recording of More Protest Songs! at St. Mark's Church is available online.

ANH VO (Brooklyn, NY)
FELLOW | PERFORMANCE

Anh Vo (they/them) is a Vietnamese dancer, writer, teacher, and activist. They create dances and produce texts about pornography and queer relations, about being and form, about identity and abstraction, about history and its colonial reality. Anh comes from a formal theoretical background, studying Performance Studies at Brown University (BA) and New York University (MA). Nevertheless, they artificially try to keep their artistic practice separate from their critical textual endeavors. Their previous work, BABYLIFT, attempted to conjure the ghosts of the Vietnam War, premiering at Target Margin Theater to no audience. Recently, Zoom gathering has allowed Anh to teach/introduce experimental performance to young adults in Vietnam, which has been a challenging and rewarding process.

JULIE TOLENTINO (Los Angeles, CA)
MENTOR | PERFORMANCE

Julie Tolentino (she/her) is a performance installation maker whose work draws from a variety of visual, archival, and movement strategies. Her work has been presented at many venues, including the New Museum, The Kitchen, Danspace Project in NY; Volume, Los Angeles Contemporary, Cypress Gallery, Commonwealth & Council, The Night Gallery, Pieter, High Desert Test Sites, The Palms in Southern California; PSi Stanford in Northern California; The Wexner Center, and internationally in the UK, France, Germany, Philippines, Singapore, Abu Dhabi and Greece.

ANTONIUS-TIN BUI (New Haven, CT)
FELLOW | VISUAL ART

Antonius-Tin Bui (they/them) is a shapeshifter whose artistic practice is non-binary as their own identity. They play in the realms of hand-cut paper, community engagement, performance, and soft sculpture to visualize hybrid identities and histories that confront the unsettling present. Their ever-changing queer, genderfluid, Vietnamese-American experience informs the way they employ beauty as a refuge for fellow marginalized communities. Bui’s honors include fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Vermont Studio Center, Kala Art Institute, Halcyon Arts Lab, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and Yaddo.

LOLA FLASH (New York, NY)
MENTOR | PERFORMANCE

Lola Flash (they/them) has been working at the forefront of genderqueer visual politics for more than three decades, challenging gender, sexual, and racial stereotypes and preconceptions through photography. An active member of ACT UP during the time of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, their art and activism are profoundly connected, fueling a life-long commitment to visibility and preserving the legacy of LGBTQIA+ and communities of color. They are currently a proud member of the Kamoinge Collective and is on the board at QueerIArt.

UTĒ PETIT (New Orleans, LA)
FELLOW | VISUAL ART

Utē Petit (they/them) is an artist, transit, geography, and plant nerd. They work ancestrally inheriting their grandmother’s roles as quilters, and farmers. Having returned to New Orleans and Mississippi they continue to explore how these interests can mesh together. They have shown at Loyal Gallery (Stockholm, SE), The New Orleans African American Museum of Art, and Library Street Collective (Detroit, MI). Currently they are developing plans for a regional transit cooperative: Kindred Airways, Rural Railways, & Trailways.

JEFFREY GIBSON (New York, NY)
MENTOR | VISUAL ART

Jeffrey Gibson (he/him) is a multimedia artistic practice synthesizes the cultural and artistic traditions of Cherokee and Choctaw heritage with Modernism and queer culture. A vibrant call for empowerment, his work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum; Denver Art Museum; Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C.; among many others. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2019); a Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2015); among other awards.

AGUSTINE ZEGERS (Richmond, VA)
FELLOW | VISUAL ART

agustine zegers (they/them) is a Chilean artist, writer, and bacterial community dedicated to the worlds of olfaction and symbiosis. Their work uses text, olfaction, and ritual in an attempt to comprehend and commune with flows of ecological collapse as well to question the pervasive systems that produce them. Their work has been exhibited at Critical Distance in Canada, Galería Metropolitana in Chile, and the Sharjah Art Foundation in the UAE. Their work has been published by the Institute of Queer Ecology, the Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, DIS Magazine, and Genderfail Press.

CONSTANTINA ZAVITSANOS (New York, NY)
MENTOR | VISUAL ART

Constantina Zavitsanos (they/them) works in sculpture, performance, text, and sound to elaborate what’s invaluable in the re/production of debt, dependency, and means beyond measure. Zavitsanos has exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, New Museum, and The Kitchen among other NY venues; and internationally in Scotland and Germany. They co-authored “Other Forms of Conviviality” in Women & Performance (Routledge, 2013) and “The Guild of the Brave Poor Things” in Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (MIT Press, 2017).