The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is pleased to announce Luke Sutherland, Vannida S. Kol, Amira Hanafi, Henry Hicks, and Mugabi Byenkya as the recipients of our Fall 2024 Residency Fellowships. These residencies are designed to give artists time and space to explore their creative projects in a quiet and productive environment.
Trans and Nonbinary Writers Fellowship Recipient
Luke Sutherland is a multi-genre writer and library worker living on unceded Piscataway territories, so called Washington D.C. His debut chapbook Distance Sequence won the OutWrite 2023 Chapbook Contest in Nonfiction and is forthcoming from Neon Hemlock Press. He has received funding from HumanitiesDC and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He was a finalist for the Larry Neal Writers’ Award, the Black Warrior Review Flash Contest, and the SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction. His work has appeared in smoke and mold, ANMLY, Bright Wall/Dark Room, and elsewhere. He is also a co-founding editor of the trans micropress Lilac Peril. You can find him online as @lukejsuth.
Women and Nonbinary Writers Fellowship Recipients
Vannida S. Kol is a Khmer-American poet with a BA in English, a Certificate in Poetry, and a Minor in Religious Studies from the University of Texas–Austin. As a second-generation immigrant and eldest daughter of refugees, her writing navigates and merges Khmer culture, Buddhist philosophy, and interpretations of the metaphysical. She was a member of the Winter 2024 SEA Change Lab cohort. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hothouse Literary Journal, Silk Club ATX, Shō Poetry Journal, and the Rising Phoenix Review, among others. She divides her time between Texas and Cambodia.
Amira Hanafi is a poet and artist who creates systems, games, and interactive digital works to bring different voices and characters into conversation with each other. Their works are widely accessible online and have been shown in offline exhibitions around the world. They are the author of the books Forgery and Minced English, a number of limited-edition artist’s books, and a growing number of works of electronic literature, including the award winning A Dictionary of the Revolution.
Black and/or Indigenous Writers Fellowship & Support Grant Recipient
Henry Hicks IV (he/him) is a Washington, D.C.-based writer and organizer with roots in the Deep South. Henry’s writing centers the people and communities realizing new visions of what our world can be. His work has appeared in Mother Jones, Teen Vogue, In These Times, The Drift, and The Brooklyn Rail, among others. He finds inspiration in the musings of Octavia Butler, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Lucille Clifton, and, of course, James Baldwin. He believes in storytelling as an avenue for affecting social change.
A graduate of Oberlin College, having studied creative writing and comparative American studies, Henry is a Harry S. Truman Scholar.
Support Grant Recipient
Mugabi Byenkya (They/Them) is an award-winning writer, editor, performer and rapper from Kampala, Uganda. Their work explores: cross-genre/hybridity, accessibility, being Black, Disabled and Neurodivergent in an white supremacist, able-bodied, neurotypical world, the social construction of gender and platonic intimacy. Mugabi’s writing and music has been published in Carte Blanche, Best Canadian Poetry, Skin Deep, and elsewhere. They were awarded as one of 56 writers who have contributed to Uganda’s literary heritage in the 56 years since independence by Writivism, among other awards, grants, and fellowships. They recently published their debut chapbook “Songs For Wo(Men)” (The Sheffield Chapbooks, Gordon Hill Press, 2024). You can follow them, find out more about them and their work at: https://www.mugabibyenkya.com/
Finalists for this year’s fellowships included Para Vadhahong, Stella Lei, Jo Bear, Mónica Gomery, Talia Kimberly Wright, and Binx Perino.
