The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is pleased to announce Ariadne Makridakis Arroyo, Brenna Two Bears, Naomi Day, and Olivia Woldemikael as the recipients of our Spring 2025 Residency Fellowships. These residencies are designed to give artists time and space to explore their creative projects in a quiet and productive environment.
LGBTQIA+ Fellowship Recipients
Ariadne Makridakis Arroyo (she/they) is a Los Angeles-based poet, writer, arts administrator, and feminista of Greek and Guatemalan descent who grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. They completed their bachelor’s degree in Critical Theory & Social Justice at Occidental College in 2020. Her work has been featured in Stonecoast Review, Stanchion Zine, Latin@ Literatures, Tasteful Rude, Text Power Telling, and Acentos Review, among others. They are a 2023 Speculative Fiction Fellow in the Words of Resistance & Restoration Fellowship provided by Roots. Wounds. Words.
Brenna Two Bears is Diné, Hočak, and Standing Rock Lakota from Flagstaff, AZ and Black River Falls, WI. They are an award-winning writer with publications in Saving Earth Magazine, Timberline Review, and more forthcoming. They are a recipient of the Kay Snow Award for Fiction, the Michael Collier Scholarship and a Bread Loafer, and an Emerging Local Native Poet with the Native Arts and Culture Foundation’s Voices Like Thunder. Brenna’s upcoming novel 10,000 Moon Could Never Be Enough was long listed for the First Pages Prize in Fiction 2024. Brenna lives in Oregon with her partner and their cat, Gizmo.
She began her career fighting environmental racism in her tribal homelands from the age of 13. Since then, Brenna has focused her work on uplifting voices that often go unheard. This includes work in grassroots organizing with movements, museum consultation on behalf of Native communities, and a passion for working with Native youth. She holds a BA in Art History & Visual Culture Studies from Whitman College, with a focus on Tribal Museums and the Politics of Display.
Black and/or Indigenous Writers Fellowship & Travel Stipend Recipient
Naomi Day is a queer Black interdisciplinary storyteller and teaching artist. She creates Afro-centric speculative fiction and film photography in which she interrogates her generational distance from the concept of home, examines the nuances of life along the margins, and unpacks the effects of sustained trauma and systems of power on queer Black lives. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Uncanny Magazine, khōréō, FIYAH Magazine, and more. She and her work have been supported by funding from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, the Carl Brandon Society, and The Seventh Wave. She’s part of the Clarion West Class of 2022.
Travel Stipend Recipient
Olivia Woldemikael (she/her) is a perpetual student, writer, teacher, and community worker in migration motivated by a commitment to dignity for all people. She is also a lover of reading, writing, dancing, yoga, and all forms of creative expression.
Finalists for this spring’s fellowships include Ademola Adefolami, Tamar Ashdot, Julia Carpenter, James Davis, Amirio Freeman, Hermelinda Hernandez Monjaras, and Ide Thompson.
