The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is pleased to announce Sarah Bawany, Melanie Hyo-In Han, Adia Micah Muhammad, Nada Samih-Rotondo, Melissa Range, and Malik Thompson as the recipients of our Summer 2024 Residency Fellowships. These residencies are designed to give artists time and space to explore their creative projects in a quiet and productive environment.
Writers of Color Fellowship Recipients 
Sara Bawany is an award-winning poet, author, freelance editor, clinical social worker, and MFA Poetry student at Texas State University. She published (w)holehearted: a collection of poetry and prose in 2018, which won Daybreak Press Publishing’s “Best Poetry Book” award, and her second book, Quarter Life Crisis, was published in October 2023. She serves as an instructor and mentor at House of Amal, a writing institution for young Muslims, and is the Assistant Managing Editor of Texas State University’s on-campus journal, Porter House Review. You can access more of her work at www.sarabawany.com.
Born in Korea and raised in East Africa, Melanie Hyo-In Han recently moved from the U.S. to the U.K., where she is a Ph.D. candidate in Creative Writing, the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Flora Fiction, and the Two Languages Prize Editor at Gasher Press. She is the author of My Dear Yeast (Milk & Cake Press, 2023) and Sandpaper Tongue, Parchment Lips (Finishing Line Press, 2021), as well as the translator of several collections of Spanish poetry (Hebel Ediciones). Nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Han has received awards from “Boston in 100 Words,” Valiant Scribe, The Lyric Magazine, and elsewhere. She holds an M.F.A. in Poetry and Translation, an M.Ed. in English and Spanish, and a B.A. in English, Spanish, and Linguistics. Learn more about her at melaniehan.com.
Black & Indigenous Writer Fellowship Recipient
and Support Grant Winner
Adia Micah Muhammad (they/he) is a writer and English teacher in Philadelphia. Micah is the winner of The Pinch‘s 2022 Literary Award for Poetry as judged by Phillip B. Williams and a Pushcart Prize nominee. They have work published or forthcoming in HAD, Driftwood Press, fifth wheel press, Glass Mountain, and elsewhere. They’re on Twitter and Instagram as @uhhhhdia.
Writers of Palestinian Descent Fellowship Recipient 
Nada Samih-Rotondo is a multi-genre Palestinian American writer, educator, and mother. A graduate of Rhode Island College, she earned degrees in English and Education and an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. When she is not befriending trees or attuning to hidden stories, she is leading transformational educational experiences and addressing the social-emotional needs of historically underserved and multilingual youth. Her writing has appeared in Masters Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and Squat Birth Journal. She lives in Providence with her husband and three children. All Water Has Perfect Memory is her first book.
Creekmore Bespoke Writing Fellowship Recipient 
Melissa Range is the author of Scriptorium, a winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series (Beacon Press, 2016), and Horse and Rider (Texas Tech University Press, 2010). Recent poems have appeared in Ecotone, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Nation, and Ploughshares. Range is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the American Antiquarian Society, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Originally from East Tennessee, she teaches creative writing and American literature at Lawrence University in Wisconsin.
Support Grant Winner
Malik Thompson is a Black queer man from Washington, DC. His work is featured, or forthcoming, in The Cincinnati Review, Sundog Lit, Diode, MQR Mixtape, Oroboro, Poet Lore, and other places. He has received support from Lambda Literary, Obsidian Foundation, Brooklyn Poets, Cave Canem, Guernica, and other organizations. He can be found on Instagram via the handle @latesummerstar.
Finalists for this summer’s fellowships include Siham Inshassi, Joanna Ng, Amari Amai, Ayotola Tehingbola, Iqra Khan, Chisom Okafor, Lenna Jawdat, Thomas Dunn II, Ayling Zulema Dominguez, and Amy Beth Sisson.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is a writers residency and arts collective that hosts workshops, retreats, and residencies for writers in all genres including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, journalism, academic writing, playwriting, and more. We are currently open for applications for our fall residency period.
