Present and Former Creative and Performing Artist and Writer Fellows

The American Antiquarian Society offers Creative and Performing Artists and Writers Fellowships for people who are creating works of art or non-fiction in any discipline designed for general, non-academic audiences.

Listed below are the people who have been awarded fellowships since the program's inception in 1995.

 

2017

Arielle Ballard (William Randolph Hearst Fellow) is a poet from Brockton, Massachusetts. Her project, a full-length book of poetry, explores race and ethnicity with a particular focus on the interactions between black and indigenous people with American society prior to the twentieth century.

Erik Rodgers (Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellow) is a fiction writer from Los Angeles, California. His project is a novel entitled “The Broken World” about early colonial America.

Linwood Rumney (Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellow) is a poet from Cincinnati, Ohio, whose collection of poems, “Discrepant Means”, explores media sensationalism, religious extremism, and hoaxing as they emerge in the nineteenth century.

Steven Subotnick (Jay and Deborah Last Fellow) is a filmmaker from Providence, Rhode Island. He will conduct research for a series of short animated films entitled “Tender Parts” that explores the nature of tall tale characters in nineteenth-century America.

Shana Youngdahl (William Randolph Hearst Fellow) is a poet from Farmington, Maine. She is working on a collection of poems about history of women in the early tin ware industry in New England.

 

2016

Matt Dellinger (Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellow) is a nonfiction writer and digital archivist from Brooklyn, New York. Dellinger worked for 11 years at The New Yorker magazine, where he led early digital efforts including the launch of their first editorial website, the production of their first podcasts, and the creation of their complete digital archive. Matt has since overseen archive projects for Vogue, Esquire, and Aperture magazines. As a writer, Matt’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Oxford American, Smithsonian, and Popular Science. His first book, Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway, was published by Scribner in 2010. He holds a B.A. in English Composition from DePauw University. Dellinger will conduct research at AAS for his current book project about the Brooklyn 14th Regiment, which fought in the Civil War.

Krista Elrick (Jay and Deborah Last Fellow) is a photographer from Santa Fe, New Mexico. She holds a BA from Hampshire College and a MFA in Photography from Arizona State University. Elrick has exhibited widely throughout the United States and has received commissions from the New Mexico Museum for Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe the museum’s first major photography exhibition in 25 years; from the Seattle Arts Commission for the Cancer Lifeline Public Art Project, and the Phoenix Arts Commission for her Hoo-hoogam Ki: Beyond Pueblo Grande Collaborative Art Project. For the past ten years she has been engaged in Retracing Audubon: Contemporary Views, an exhibition and book project that reexamines John James Audubon’s epic journey and the production of The Birds of America through contemporary photographs and essays. Elrick will conduct research for this project at AAS.

Brighde Mullins (William Randolph Hearst Fellow) is a playwright from Los Angeles, California. She holds a B.A. from the University of Nevada, and an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop and an MFA in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama. Her plays include: The Bourgeois Pig, Rare Bird, Monkey in the Middle, Teach, Those Who Can, Do, and Click among others. Her work has been produced at the Magic Theatre, LaMaMA E.T.C., the Pioneer Theatre Company, and the Tristan Bates Theatre in London. At AAS she will research the life and times of Phyllis Wheatley for Unfreedom: A Play, which has been developed by the Hartford Stage Company.

Catherine Sasanov (Charlotte and Robert J. Baron Fellow) is a poet from Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. She is the author of the poetry collections Had Slaves (Firewheel Editions, 2010), All the Blood Tethers (Northeastern University Press, 2002), and Traditions of Bread and Violence (Four Way Books, 1996). She is also the librettist for Las horas de Belén: A Book of Hours, a theater work commissioned by Mabou Mines. Her previous awards include fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, and residencies at Blue Mountain Center and the MacDowell Colony. At AAS, she will conduct research for a book of poems and prose poem meditations titled “Markd Y (Archives and Invocations)” about an enslaved woman branded Y, sent from Barbados to Kittery, Maine, in 1719. A selection of work from this manuscript-in-progress can be accessed in the online journals Poor Yorick and Common-place.org, where it appeared in January 2015.

Susan Stinson (William Randolph Hearst Fellow) is novelist from Northampton, Massachusetts. She is the author of the novels Spider in a Tree (Small Beer Press, 2013); Venus of Chalk (Firebrand Books, 2004); Martha Moody (Spinsters Ink, 1995) Fat Girls Dances with Rocks (Spinsters Ink, 1994) and Belly Songs: In Celebration of Fat Women (Orogeny Press, 1993). Her fiction has appeared in Early American Studies and Seneca Review among others. Stinson holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado. At AAS, she will conduct research for her novel “Tuttle” about the Puritan woman, Elizabeth Tuttle Edwards.

 

2015

Annie Bissett (Last) is a printmaker from Northampton, Massachusetts. She will conduct research for a project about the spirituality/religiosity of American national identity. She plans to create a series of woodblock prints, with some perhaps bound into book form.

Stephanie Carpenter (Hearst) is a fiction writer from Hancock, Michigan. Her research project is entitled "Many and Wide Separations: Two Novellas" which focuses on professional female artists in New England in the mid-nineteenth century. The novel will feature the impact of Margaret Fuller’s death on her fictional heroine. Stephanie was an Artist Alternate in 2012 and has come and worked in the library.

Erin Lyons (Hearst) is a writer from Washington, DC. Her project is to conduct research for historical novel about Anne Hutchinson and Massachusetts Bay Colony, from 1630-1638, told from the point of view of a servant girl. Erin was an alternate last year and an Artist in Residence this past September.

Sara Smith (Baron) is a choreographer from Greenfield, Massachusetts. She will conduct research for a movement-theatre piece about the life and work of a fictional 19th century geologist and prophet, drawing on geology, quantum physics, transcendentalism, and philosophy.

Jeanne Schinto (Baron) is a writer and journalist who lives in Andover, Massachusetts. She will conduct research for 3-part series about the Walpole Society which will appear in the magazine Maine Antique Digest.

 

2014

Meganne Fabrega (Jay and Deborah Last Fellow) is a non-fiction writer from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who is writing a book about the Amy Ella Blanchard (1856-1926) and Ida Waugh (1846-1919) who together published hundreds of books, together and separately, mainly directed toward and about girls in the late nineteenth century.

Carolyn Kras (William Randolph Hearst Fellow) is a screenwriter living in Los Angeles, California. She will conduct research for a television series entitled Windy City about Chicago immediately after the Great Fire of 1871.

Margaret Rozga (Charlotte and Robert Baron Fellow) is a poet from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She will conduct research for a collection of poems about Jesse Benton Frémont (1824-1902), who along with her husband, John Charles Frémont, was a leader in settling California.

Sarah Stern (William Randolph Hearst Fellow) is a playwright from Red Hook, New York. She will research eighteenth-century New York politics and theater/performance culture for a play tentatively titled The Spectators.

Holly M. Wendt (Charlotte and Robert Baron Fellow) is a novelist from Casper, Wyoming. She will conduct research for her novel The Oak and Holly King about the exploits of the pirate Samuel “Black Sam” Bellamy whose ship, the Whydah, was sunk off the Massachusetts Coast in the early 1700s.

 

2013

Amina Gautier (William Randolph Hearst Creative Artist Fellow) is a scholar and a fiction writer living in Chicago, Illinois. She received her B.A. and M.A.in English from Stanford University and a second M.A. and the Ph. D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently an assistant professor of English at DePaul University. Her collection of short stories At Risk; (University of Georgia Press, 2011) won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and has been widely praised by critics. She has won the Crazyhorse Editor's Prize for Fiction for her story "Candidate" and the Lamar York Prize in Fiction, Chattahoochee Review for her story "Bodega." In 2012, she was also the Walter E. Dakin Fellow at the Sewanee Writer's Conference in Sewanee, Tennessee. Her stories have appeared in the Antioch Review, the Iowa Review, the Kenyon Review, Shenandoah and Southern Review to name a few. At the American Antiquarian Society, she plans to research a historical novel that explores racial prejudice in the antebellum reform movement.

Aimee Parkison (William Randolph Hearst Creative Artist Fellow) is a poet and fiction writer from Charlotte, North Carolina who earned her B.A. from Oklahoma State University and her M.F.A. from Cornell University. She is currently an associate professor in the English Department of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her published books include Woman with Dark Horses (Starcherone Press, 2004), and The Innocent Party (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2012). Her work has appeared widely in such publications as The Literary Review, The Tusculum Review, North American Review, American Literary Review, Briar Cliff Review, PMS (poem memoir story) Nimrod International Journal and the California Quarterly to name just a few. An original historical literary novel, The Dumb Supper, is the subject of her research here at AAS. Set in nineteenth century Concord, Massachusetts the novel focuses on the lives of four young women of marriageable age who meet their potential mates at an adult dinner where no one is allowed to speak but must communicate their needs and desires to each other and their hostess through nonverbal communication.

Melissa Range (Robert and Charlotte Baron Creative Artist Fellow), originally from East Tennessee, is a poet now living in Columbia, Missouri. Range is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Missouri. She also holds a B.A. from the University of Tennessee, an M.F.A. from Old Dominion University, and an M.T.S. from Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Her first book of poems, Horse and Rider (Texas Tech University Press, 2010), won the 2010 Walt McDonald Prize in Poetry and was a finalist for the 2011 Kate Tufts Discovery Prize. Range is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a “Discovery” / The Nation prize, and fellowships from Yaddo, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her poems have appeared in 32 Poems, The Georgia Review, The Hudson Review, Image, New England Review, The Paris Review, and other journals. Her project at the American Antiquarian Society will explore abolitionist publications for a poetry project currently titled Emancipator.

Lynn Thomson (Robert and Charlotte Baron Creative Artist Fellow) is a theater director and dramaturg from New York City. She received her B.A. from the University of Michigan, a M.F.A. from Temple University, and the Ph.D. from New York University. She is the founding artistic director of America-in-Play, a theater company that creates new plays based upon historical American plays and theatrical conventions. She is also a professor in the theater department of Brooklyn College. She was associated with the Philadelphia Theater Company from 1984-1994 first as associate artistic director and then as artistic associate. From 1991-95, she served as dramaturg for the Circle Repertory Company in New York. She has directed plays for off-Broadway and regional theater companies throughout the country including: the Cherry Lane Theater, Hudson Guild Theater, Theatre Four, Living Image Arts, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, The Playwrights Center and Playwrights Horizons. At AAS, she plans to research theatre and American life in and around 1828 for a production of a new play entitled The Time Traveler’s Trip to Niagara Falls.

Stephanie Wolff (Deborah and Jay Last Fellow) is a book artist from Norwich, Vermont. She received her B.S. from the University of Vermont and her M.A.L.S. from Dartmouth College. She maintains a hand bookbinding and book artist studio in Vermont while also being an instructor in the Book Arts Program and an assistant conservator at Dartmouth College. She has exhibited at the Chandler Center for the Arts Gallery, the University of Florida Libraries, Chicago Public Library, Oberlin College Library, The Free Library of Philadelphia, Smith College, and the Providence Athenaeum, among many others. Her research at the Society will concentrate on the twelve diaries of Anna Blackwood Howell (1769-1855) to explore the phenomenon of weather both in historic terms and its place in modern life.

 

2012

Nancy Bowen was awarded a Jay and Deborah Last Fellowship for work with visual materials. Her project is a visual and textual study of the Society’s extensive Almanac Collection and the Farber Gravestone Collection to enrich a series of her collages, titled “Angels and Almanacs.” Bowen is a mixed media artist from Brooklyn, New York. She is an associate professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Purchase, N.Y. and holds an M.F.A. degree from Hunter College and a B.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has had a distinguished career as an artist, with solo and group exhibitions spanning thirty-one years. Bowen received sculpture fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She was a resident at the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo as well as a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. Her latest exhibitions at the Maass Gallery at Purchase College, the Peeler Art Gallery of DePauw University and the Moore College of Art Gallery in Philadelphia included sculpture, drawing and collages inspired by items from her family home in New England.

Deborah Brevoort was awarded a Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship. Her project is a historical play about George and Martha Washington and the role of fashion in shaping the American identity. Brevoort is a playwright from North Bergen, N.J. Her full-length play, The Women of Lockerbie won the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award and a silver medal in the Onassis International Playwriting competition. Another play, The Blue-Sky Boys about NASA’s Apollo engineers was researched and written with a commission from the EST/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project and won the Galileo Prize. Her musical, Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing with composer Scott Richards received the 2001 Frederick Loewe Award and was optioned for Broadway production by Stuart Ostrow. Carpenter holds M.F.A. degrees in playwriting from Brown University and in musical theatre from New York University; an M.A. in political science and a B.A. in English from Kent State University.

Ansel Elkins was awarded a William Randolph Hearst Fellowship. Her project is a book-length collection of poems tentatively titled Fearful Symmetry, which explores the private lives of nineteenth-century conjoined twins Change and Eng Bunker and Millie-Christine McKoy. Elkins holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a B.A from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NC. She is recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship, was writer-in-residence at Hedgebrook on Whidbey Island, WA and was poetry editor at The Greensboro Review. She is winner of the “Discovery” Boston Review Poetry Prize and the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Competition. Her poems have been published in numerous journals; “Ghost at My Door” was featured in Best New Poets, “Reverse: A Lynching” in Boston Review and “Tennessee Williams on Art & Sex” in The Believer.

Anne Harley also was awarded a William Randolph Hearst Fellowship. Her project will gather primary resources on Mother Lee, the founder of the Shakers, to compose a libretto and commission a song cycle for performance and recording. Additionally, she will research early American song repertoire in hymnals, sheet music and songsters to create a recital of early American music that illuminates the cultural landscape of America in the early 1800s. Harley is a soprano and stage director in Claremont, CA where she is assistant professor of the Music Department at Scripps College. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts, historical performance and a Masters of Music, voice performance from Boston University and a B.A. in comparative literature from Yale College. Harley’s international career in performance includes groups such as Boston Camerata; she is a soloist and ensemble member who performed in the world premiere of “Borrowed Light,” American traditional Shaker music. Her role as Margaret Mead in “A House in Bali” by Evan Ziporyn premiered in Ubud, Bali. Among her numerous other solo and concert performances were two medieval programs while in residency in Reims, France and a solo concert in Osnago, Italy with Milano Classica Orchestra.

Catherine Reid was also awarded a Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship. Her project is an extended work of creative nonfiction tentatively titled 13 Travels with William Bartram on the life and writings of the eighteenth century author. Reid is an essayist in Asheville, NC where she is an assistant professor at Warren Wilson College. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL., an M.A. in English from the University of Maine in Orono, ME and a B.A. from Goddard College in Plainfield, VT. Reid is author of Coyote: Seeking the Hunter in our Midst, a memoir that interweaves personal and natural history. She is co-editor with Holly Inglesias of His Hands, His Tools, His Sex, His Dress, and Every Woman I’ve Ever Loved. Her essay, “And After a Sweet Singing Fall Down,” was published in The Georgia Review and numerous other essays have been published in journals including Whole Terrain and Platte Valley Review. Additionally, she has published short fiction, poetry and book reviews.

 

2011

Mary Beth Ellis was awarded a Jay and Deborah Last Fellowship for work with visual materials. She is a creative non-fiction writer from Mobile, Alabama. Ms. Ellis holds B.A. degrees in English and Political Science from Saint Mary’s College and an M.F.A. in Nonfiction Writing from Bennington College. She is the author of Drink to the Lasses (Cold Tree Press, 2006) and her essay “The Waltz” appeared in Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Authors: The Best New Voices of 2006 (Random House, 2006) She is a former contributor to Dish Pronto, JamsBio, and FreelanceSwitch.com. Other credits include Smithsonian Air & Space, the Cincinnati Enquirer, Weber: The Contemporary West, and Notre Dame Magazine. Her project at AAS will be to research eighteenth century broadsides for a comparative study of eighteenth-century politics and print culture and contemporary web-based politics.

Lisa Hayes was awarded a Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship. She is an actress and playwright from Bowie, Maryland. Hayes studied at the Joan White English Theatre School in London holds a B.A. in Drama from the University of Washington in Seattle, a M.A. in Humanities and a Ph.D. in American Studies both from the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. She has created and performed in two one-woman shows; Jane Eyre and Nurse! both of which have toured extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Her extensive credits as an actress include creating the role of "Rachel" in Arlene Hutton's As It Is In Heaven and appearances on All My Children and One Life to Live. At AAS, she will conduct research for a series of museum theater presentations about Colonial America that will be performed at the Accokeek Foundation’s National Colonial Farm, a living history museum in Maryland, where Ms. Hayes is Director of Education and Public Programs.

Kelle Groom was awarded a William Randolph Hearst Fellowship. She is a poet and memoirist from New Smyrna Beach, Florida. She holds both a B.A. in English and a M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Central Florida. The first volume of her memoir I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl will be published by The Free Press/Simon & Schuster in 2011. She has published three books of poetry all by the Anhinga Press: Underwater City, Luckily, and Five Kingdoms. Additionally, her poems have appeared in: Bloomsbury Review, The London Magazine, POETRY, The Gettysburg Review, Luna, and Mid-American Review among others. Her research project at AAS is to investigate the life of her relative Thomas Greenough, the last surviving Wampanoag Indian on the Bass River reservation in South Yarmouth, Massachusetts. This information will be incorporated into her second memoir.

Brian Teare was also awarded a William Randolph Hearst Fellowship. Mr. Teare is a poet from San Francisco. He holds B.A. in English from the University of Alabama and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Indiana University. He was also a Fellow in the Wallace E. Stegner Program at Stanford University. His work has appeared in many journals including Denver Quarterly, New England Review, Sink Review and the Literary Review and has been widely anthologized. He is the author of three books: Pleasure (Ahsahta Press, 2010) Sight Map (University of California Press, 2009) and The Room Where I was Born (University of Wisconsin Press, 2003). At AAS, he will conduct research for a book of text and photographs about spirit photography tentatively titled Taken.

Cam Terwilliger was awarded a Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship. He is a poet, fiction writer and free-lance journalist from Somerville, Massachusetts, who holds a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Allegheny College and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Terwilliger is a winner of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship in 2008, a Somerville Arts Council Artists Fellowship and an Academy of Americans Poets Prize. His fiction has appeared in the literary journals: West Branch, Post Road, The Sycamore Review, The Mid-American Review, and the Allegheny Review among others. At AAS, Terwilliger will conduct research for a novel-in-progress entitled Yet Wilderness Grew in Our Hearts set during the French and Indian War.

 

2010

Wendy Call, Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellow, a non-fiction writer from Florida conducting research on the grieving process for a series of literary essays.

Sean Hill, William Randolph Hearst Foundation Fellow, a poet from Minnesota who conducted research for a series of poems about two African American men who immigrated with their families from Milledgeville, Georgia to Liberia in the 1870s.

Kathryn Nuernberger, William Randolph Hearst Foundation Fellow, a poet from Ohio working on a collection of poems entitled "Curiosities."

Suzanne Rivecca, Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellow,
a fiction writer from California whose project is a novel about Walt Whitman's sojourn by boat down the Mississippi River to New Orleans with his brother, Jeff.

Stephanie Solomon, Jay and Deborah Last Fellow, a dramatist/performer from California, conducting eighteenth-century picture research for a project entitled "American Voices: Spirit of Revolution" that combines historical quotes with musical selections to describe the founding of the nation.

 

2009

Carol Flueckiger, Last Artist Fellow, painter, Lubbock, TX, research for a body of paintings about feminism and early American reform practices

Honorée Jeffers ,Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellow, poet, Norman, OK, research for a book of poems titled The Art of Mastering, whose centerpiece is a series of poems about Phillis Wheatley, imagining her interior life

Ann Lovett, Hearst Artist Fellow, photographer, New Paltz, NY, research for an artists' book about the textile mills of Lowell and other Massachusetts mill towns and the "mill girls" who worked in them

Robert Strong , Heast Artist Fellow, poet, Canton, NY, research for a book-length work of poetry titled Bright Advent set in the years leading up to King Philip's War

Lauren Yee , Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellow, playwright, San Francisco, CA, research for a play exploring the concept of performing racial identity in America, particularly with respect to minstrelsy

 

2008

Martha Carlson-Bradley
Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellow
Poet, Hillsborough, NH
Research for a collection of poems based on the New England Primer

Debra Gwartney
Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellow
Non-fiction writer, Eugene, OR, research for a book on Narcissa Prentiss Whitman, the first European woman to cross the Rocky Mountains

Sandra Jackson-Opoku
Hearst Artist Fellow
Novelist, Chicago, IL
Research for a novel entitled God's Gift to the Natives that charts the history and movement
of the African diaspora

Janet Pritchard
Last Artist Fellow
Photographer and assoc. prof. of art at Connecticut
Research for a photographic project entitled "Views from Wonderland,"
which explores the making of Yellowstone National Park from the 1870s to the 1890s

Celeste Roberge
Hearst Artist Fellow
Professor, University of Florida
Research on American furniture, in particular its fabrication, use, history, and depiction in
American painting, photography, and sculpture

 

2007

Laurie Block, Conway, Massachusetts, documentary filmmaker, "Becoming Helen Keller," a documentary film and digital on-line museum project (William Randolph Hearst Foundation Fellow)

Gino DiIorio, New York City, playwright, to research the life of southern politician, Edmund Ross (Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellow)

Heidi W. Durrow, Los Angeles, California, fiction writer, research for a novel-in-progress about Miss Lala, a mulatta strongwoman of the Victorian
era (Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellow)

Kimberly Elkins, New York City, fiction writer, a novel about the lives of Laura Bridgman, Julia Ward Howe, and Sarah Wight set between 1829 and 1876
(William Randolph Hearst Foundation Fellow)

Sarah McCoubrey, Fayetteville, New York, painter, research to create "Hannah Morse: Landscape Painter," a fictive archive (Jay and Deborah Last Creative and Performing Artists Fellow)

 

2006

Robert Shuster was awarded a Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship. A writer based in New York State, he has written on arts and culture for
The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, The Portland Oregonian, Adobe Magazine, and Seattle Weekly, where he was a regular contributor with reviews and profiles. He was senior editor at Adobe Magazine for three years. His fiction has won several awards, and has appeared in the anthologies Micro Fiction (W.W. Norton, 1996) and Yellow Silk
II (Warner Books, 2000), as well as in The Mississippi Review, The Alaska Quarterly Review, and Sun Dog, among other publications. His second novel, The Herald of the Underworld, is currently represented by the JCA Literary Agency. During his fellowship residency at AAS, he will research America's culture of war and the military in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for his non-fiction book The Indestructible Soldier, which takes a personal, historical, and critical look at the civilian fascination with war.

R. Sikoryak's cartoons and illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker, Nickelodeon Magazine, Little Lit, Fortune, Esquire, GQ, among other publications, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (the Book). In addition to his freelance work, he creates comic strip parodies of classic literature for magazines such as Drawn & Quarterly and Raw. Sikoryak is the co-author, with Michael Smith, of The Seduction of Mike (Fantagraphics), a comic book funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. He was awarded an Artist's Fellowship from The New York Foundation for the Arts for his comics adaptations of the classics. He is in the Speakers Program of the New York Council of the Humanities and teaches in the Illustration department at Parsons School of Design. Since 1997, he has presented his cartoon slide show series, "Carousel," around the U.S. and Canada. Mr. Sikoryak's research project at AAS is a comic strip adaptation of Moby Dick.

Ginger Strand writes fiction and nonfiction. Her essays have appeared in Harper's, the Believer, Raritan, The New England Review, American Literary History, Theatre Journal, The Village Voice, Poets & Writers and Swink, as well as books from Gale, Greenwood, and the University of Michigan Press. Her fiction has been published in a wide range of journals, and her novel Flight was published by Simon and Schuster in May, 2005. She has received residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Virginia Center for theCreative Arts, and the Sewanee Writers Conference, as well as grants from the Mellon foundation and the NEH. At AAS Ms. Strand will be researching her first full-length work of nonfiction, Niagara Falls, looking for handbills, guidebooks, travelogues, treaties, and images in the society's collections.

Tess Taylor's chapbook, The Misremembered World was selected by Eavan Boland for the Poetry Society of America's New York Fellowship, and was published in limited edition by the PSA in 2003. She recieved the Morton Marr Poetry Prize from Southwest Review and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Southwest Review, Crossroads, Painted Bride Quarterly, the Times Literary Supplement, and Literary Imagination. She spent the spring of 2005 as a Copeland Fellow in residence at Amherst College, and is currently a teaching fellow in the Creative Writing Program at Boston University and serves as Assistant Poetry Editor at The Atlantic Monthly. Ms.
Taylor will use her time at the Society to conduct research for a book of poems titled The Family Chest that will examine two strains of her family history -- one from Massachusetts, the other from Virginia.

Choreographer Kriota Willberg holds a degree in Dance: Performance and Choreography from Northeastern Illinois University. DURA MATER (Latin for "Tough Mother"), was founded by Willberg, in New York, in 1993 as a vehicle for her choreography. The Dura Mater cortege has performed in a variety of dance, music, and performance venues in New York and the US. In addition to working with her company, Willberg choreographs for film/video, theatrical, and other dance productions. Her article on dance and stage combat was published in the SAFD magazine, The Fightmaster, in 2004. Willberg also teaches anatomy to dancers, yoga teachers, and Pilates instructors, and has acted as a facilitator for various artists groups and projects. Dura Mater's projects have received support from the 92nd Street Y, the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance, the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, The Field (Independent Artist Challenge Program and Artist-Manager Partnerships), The Puffin Foundation, and Dixon Place Theater (Mondo Cane! commission). Ms. Willberg will spend her time at AAS doing research on The Black Crook, America's first musical theatre extravaganza, in order to produce an up-dated version for performance in New York City.

 

2005

Amy Brill was awarded a Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship. She is a writer from Brooklyn, NY whose articles and essays have appeared in online magazines and in the anthology, Before and After: Stories from New York, and is a former fellow in residence at the Millay Colony for the Arts and the Edward Albee Foundation. Ms. Brill will conduct research for her novel, The Observations, a fictional account of a female astronomer in Nantucket in the early 1800s.

Camille Dungy was awarded a William Randolph Hearst Fellowship. Her poems have been published in numerous anthologies and she is author of the forthcoming book, What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison: Poems. Ms. Dungy is assistant professor of English at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Va. In 2004 she was named Scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers. Conference, Fellow, Eastern Frontier Society, Norton Island Artists' Retreat, and Fellow, The Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Ms. Dungy will be researching a new collection of poems, Suck on the Marrow, Chew on the Bone, set between 1815 and 1845, which investigates lives of blacks and the whites they lived and worked among.

Charles A. Hirshberg was awarded a Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship. He is a New York based writer for ESPN the Magazine, columnist for Sports Illustrated and contributor to Baron's and many other publications. Hirshberg has held staff positions at LIFE, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Popular Science. Mr. Hirshberg is author of two books, Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?: The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music and ESPN 25. He will conduct research for a forthcoming biography, Vistas of Destiny: Thomas Wentworth Higginson in Worcester.

Nancy Rubin Stuart was awarded a William Randolph Hearst Fellowship. Ms. Rubin Stuart, a director of the Women Writing Women's Lives Seminar of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, specializes in biography, women and social history. She is an award-winning journalist and author of five non-fiction books, most recently The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox published by Harcourt in 2005 and featured in the August issue of American History Magazine. Ms. Rubin Stuart will research the life of American's first female historian, Mercy Otis Warren, for a biography which will be published by Beacon Press.

 

2004

Joann Dobson was awarded a Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship. She is a novelist and scholar of nineteenth-century American literature from Brewster, New York who will be researching a new historical novel set in New York City titled, Search for India. Ms. Dobson is currently Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University. In 1997 she published her first academic mystery novel and in 2003, her fifth, The Maltese Manuscript, was published.

Martha Morss, awarded a William Randolph Hearst Foundation Fellowship, is a writer and editor from Mount Vernon, Ohio. She is writing a biography of colonial printer Mary Katherine Goddard aimed at younger readers. Ms. Morss provides editorial services to high school and college publishers, including writing curriculum-based nonfiction and poetry for younger readers. Her published works include "What's in a Name?" (Cricket); Falcon Nest (Modern Curriculum Press); A Look Around Whales (Willowisp Press); and "The Suds Are Still A Bonus" (Christian Science Monitor).

Alyson Pou was awarded a William Randolph Hearst Fellowship. She is a visual and performance work artist from New York City. Her project, A Slight Headache, is a solo performance that explores the relationship between a mother and daughter and is set in the mid to late 1800s. Ms. Pou has a multidisciplinary background in visual art, dance/theatre, and writing and her work has been performed and exhibited at numerous museums, galleries, art centers, and colleges. Previous projects include To Us At Twilight and Black Rocks, Pearl Buttons.

James Thomas Stevens was awarded a Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship. He is a poet from Dunkirk, New York, and is currently assistant professor of American Indian Studies and English at State University of New York College at Fredonia. Mr. Stevens is a member of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation and Six Nations Reserve in Ontario. He will be doing research on the Stockbridge Indian community and school to write a long poem splicing historical texts with personal narrative. His previous work includes a long poem titled, "Tokinish," and he a past recipient of the Whiting Writers Award in 2000 and was nominated for Before Columbus/American Book Award in 2003.

2003

Ruth Lopez was awarded a William Randolph Hearst Foundation Fellowship. She is a writer of non-fiction from Chicago and will be researching the McLoughlin Brothers during her stay her at AAS. Her project is a social history on the artists who helped create children's literature in America.

Lavonne Mueller was also awarded a Hearst Foundation Fellowship. She is a playwright from Chicago whose project is a collection of six short one-story plays about notable American women -- Abigail Adams. Dolly Madison, Sacagawea, Lucy Stone, Harriet Tubman, and Martha Washington.

David Roderick, a Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship recipient, was recently awarded the Wallace Stegner Writing Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University. He will be using the resources at AAS to complete a collection of poems titled Blue Colonial. This project focuses on the cultural interaction between the colonists and the Wampanoag tribe in the early part of the seventeenth-century.

Britta Sjogren, also a Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship recipient, is a filmmaker from San Francisco. Her project is a documentray film that explores the legacy of American slave dwellings tentatively titled A Chain of Windows.

2002

Deborah Dancy has been awarded a William Randolph Hearst Foundation Fellowship. At AAS, she will conduct research for an artist book entitled, "The Conjurer's Apprentice or The Legend of Yellow Mary: A Slave Girl's Tale of Survival by her Wit and Extraordinary Powers, as written by herself." Dancy is a visual artist who resides in Storrs, Connecticut and is a professor of art in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Connecticut. As a visual artist, she creates paintings, drawings, and artist books. Her many exhibitions include: the ARC Gallery in Chicago, Illinois; the Housatonic Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut; the Diggs Gallery in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; the Liz Harris Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts; and the Mona Berman Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. Her work is displayed in the permanent collections of such institutions as: Chemical Bank, Pepsico, Southern New England Telephone, Aetna Life Insurance Company, the Connecticut State Collection, the William Benton Museum of Art, and the Bloomington (Illinois) Federal Savings and Loan to name a few. Dancy has been awarded: a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the New England Foundation for the Arts Individual Arts Award, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts Award, a Yale University Visiting Faculty Fellowship and a YADDO fellowship.

Britta Sjogren was awarded the Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship at the AAS for the year 2002. She is a filmmaker who resides in San Francisco, California. Her project at AAS is a documentary film that explores the legacy of American slave dwellings tentatively titled "A Chain of Windows" . Sjogren is an assistant professor at the Department of Cinema at San Francisco State University. Her films include A Small Domain, which was a grand jury prizewinner for best short film at the Sundance Festival in 1996, and Jo-Jo at the Gate of Lions, which won the Award for narrative film at the Atlanta Festival. Her other projects include Green and Dimming and the script for Rage Carolina.

Ellen Wiener is the recipient of the second William Randolph Hearst Fellowship awarded this year. She is a painter who lives in Southhold, New York. Her project at AAS will be the creation of a new "Book of Hours" using imagery from nineteenth century sources found at AAS. Weiner has had solo exhibitions at the Sylvia Schmidt Gallery in New Orleans, the Marilyn Pearl Gallery in New York, and the More Gallery in Philadelphia. Additionally, her work has been exhibited at Swathmore, Dartmouth, Saint Mary's, and Smith Colleges, at Princeton University, and at the Nancy Drysdale Gallery in Washington, D.C., to name a few. She has been a visiting artist/lecturer/critic at the Brooklyn College Graduate School of Fine Arts, Louisiana State University School of Art and Architecture, Washington University School of Fine Arts, and Swarthmore and Dartmouth Colleges. Among her many fellowships are ones from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Ragdale Foundation.

2001

Geoffrey Brock is a recipient of one of the William Randolph Hearst Fellowships for 2001. He is a poet based in Tallahassee, Florida. He is currently working on a collection of poems based on American historical events that he will examine from oblique, personal angles while basing this writing on historical fact. During his time at AAS he will examine the Society's collection of journals and letters in hopes of finding resonant details that can be used to bring small vignettes of American history to life through poetry. Mr. Brock's poems have appeared in American Literary Review, Paris Review, and Hudson Review, among other publications. He has previously been awarded residences at the American Academy in Rome during the academic years 1999 and 2000.

Hallie Spencer Hobson is a playwright currently residing in New York City. She is the recipient of the second William Randolph Hearst Fellowship awarded this year. She will be working on an ongoing project entitle Watchnight, a historical play which unfolds on a slave plantation on the New Year's Eve of Emancipation. Ms. Hobson will conduct research in the Society's extensive newspaper and periodical collections, as well as examine institutional records and relevant secondary sources housed in the
library. Her previous works have blended history and reality as she seeks to tell stories about African American people and their communities in both contemporary and historical settings.

Emily Laurance was awarded the Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship at the AAS for the year 2001. She is a harpist and is currently living in Carrboro, North Carolina. During her residency Ms. Laurance will be utilizing the Society's collection of sheet music to research songs scored for the harp. In addition, she will be constructing a social context for the materials, particularly theatrical songs. She will also be examining the selling and distribution of the instruments, the publication of sheet music, and the art of performance in the early nineteenth century.

2000

Katrina Browne is a documentary filmmaker based in Berkeley, California. She has studied photography, documentary directing, and documentary scriptwriting. She is also a diversity/anti-racism facilitator and trainer. Her work in the AmeriCorps program included multicultural leadership development and public service apprenticeship programs for young people. She was Outreach Planning Coordinator for Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, a film project that partnered communities, schools, and workplaces to use the film as a catalyst for dialogue and action on race, ethnicity, and equity. Ms. Browne has received a William Randolph Hearst Foundation fellowship. While at AAS, she will conduct research for a television documentary entitled, Traces of the Trade, which explores the history and legacy of the slave trade in New England.

Maureen Cummins is a book artist in Brooklyn, New York. She is an instructor in printmaking and book arts at several institutions, including The Center for Books Arts, the Connecticut Graphic Arts Center, and Manhattan Graphics. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and is held in over 100 public and private collections throughout the United States, Canada, England, South Africa, and South America. Ms. Cummins is the recipient of one of the two William Randolph Hearst Foundation fellowships awarded this year. While at AAS, she will be working on a series of three works on paper that explore the fear of the "other" in American history. The titles of the three pieces will be Heretics, Heathens and Hellions; Animals, Cannibals and Savages; and Witches, Bitches and Faggots.

Sue Johnson, a visual artist, is currently associate professor of art at St. Mary's College in Maryland. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Canada and is held in numerous public and private collections. She is the author of Memory is a Kleptomaniac, Premonition of a Natural History: Fireflies Burning, and the upcoming Through a Microscope Darkly and Other Accidental Images. Ms. Johnson is the recipient of the Sigety Family Foundation fellowship for creative and performing artists. While at AAS, she will develop new images and texts for her on-going project, The Alternate Encyclopedia.

Joann Mazzio, of Rinos Altos, New Mexico, is a writer of young people's literature. She has published two historical novels, Leaving Eldorado, which was awarded a Spur by the Western Writers of America, and The One Who Came Back, which was nominated for an Edgar by the Mystery Writers of America. Her articles have appeared in Cricket magazine, Children's Digest, Highlights for Children, New Mexico Magazine, and Goldenseal. In addition to writing, she is also a speaker, and has presented talks to the International Board on Books for Young People, and the International Reading Association. Ms. Mazzio is the recipient of the Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship, a newly established award sponsored by the AAS Chairman and his wife. While at AAS, Ms. Mazzio will conduct research for a young adult novel set in the Fremont expeditions in the 1840s.

1999

Nicole Cooley is a creative writer. Currently she teaches English at Queens College, City University of New York. Her poems, which include "The Red Shoes" and "Romance," have been published in such periodicals as The New England Review, The Nation, Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, and Poetry Northwest, among others. Cooley is also the author of two books, a novel Judy Garland, Ginger Love and a book of poems, Resurrection, which received the 1995 Walt Whitman Poetry Award from the Academy of American Poets. While at AAS, she conducted research into the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 for a book of poetry entitled, The Afflicted Girls,which examines the event from a variety of perspectives and re-imagines the experiences of the people involved.

Jeanne Mackin is a novelist. A writing instructor at Ithaca College, she is the author of such books as Dreams of Empire andThe Frenchwoman. In
addition, her articles have appeared in Country Living, the New York Times, Family Circle, and other publications. Mackin was the recipient of an Excellence in Teaching Award from Ithaca College in 1996, as well as numerous scholarly grants and fellowships. She conducted research at AAS for a novel, Adam's Hunger: The Lost Journal of Brillat-Savarin's Travels in the New World, which is based upon the life and travels of Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the father of the modern cookbook, in New York and
Massachusetts, from 1794 to 1796.

Sarah Messer is a creative non-fiction writer and poet from Madison, Wisconsin. She has designed and taught various writing workshops at the University of Wisconsin and Salem State College. Messer's poems, which include "Gossip, 1692" and "Grave Ledger" have appeared in Paris Review, The Sextant, Princeton Arts Review, Quarterly West, and Kenyon Review, among others. She has had essays and articles published in Yankee Magazine. At AAS, she conducted research for a non-fiction memoir, Red House, which focuses on her family home in Marshfield, Massachusetts, and the Hatch family from 1647 to the present.

Cassandra Smith is a doll artist from Chicago, Illinois. Smith creates historically accurate dolls and then writes fictionalized biographies to accompany them. Her work has been exhibited in the DuSable Museum Trading Post and the Shop at the Chicago Cultural Center. In addition to conducting workshops at local high schools, Smith has also been published in The Crescent Review and Obsidian II. She was the recipient of a CAAP grant from the City of Chicago, as well as other scholarly fellowships.She conducted research at AAS for the development of new doll and costume designs and accompanying background stories with an emphasis on free persons of color and runaway slaves.

1998

Christopher Cokinos is a creative writer from Manhattan, Kansas. He is currently a visiting assistant professor in the English department of Kansas State University. He is a widely published poet and nonfiction writer whose works include Killing Seasons, a book of poetry, as well as works of nonfiction, critical articles, poems, and reviews. His works have been published in Kansas Quarterly and The Quarterly. He has also served as assistant director of the People, Prairies, and Plains Institute at KSU. His project at AAS resulted in the non-fiction book, Hope is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished American Birds published by Tarcher/Putnam. Christopher Cokinos also delivered a reading of this work at AAS on Friday, March 24, 2000, the 100-year anniversary of the shooting death of the last wild passenger pigeon.

Tom Dunn is a playwright from Henniker, New Hampshire. He is founder and first director of the Playwrights. Center in Minneapolis, and former director of New Dramatists, the nation's oldest playwrights. workshop. His plays have included: Darwin, Gun Play, In Pursuit of the Song of Hydrogen, and The Memo. He has also written books on playwriting, fundraising, and acting. Outside of the theater, he has written for newspapers and magazines and has been a commentator for National Public Radio. At AAS, Dunn researched mid- to late-nineteenth-century American painters for a series of plays on Winslow Homer.

Cornelia Nixon is a novelist and short story writer. A member of the English faculty at Indiana University since 1981, she is the author of NowYou See It, a novel-in-stories published in 1992; Lawrence's Leadership:Politics and the Turn Against Women, a work of criticism as well as short stories published in the Indiana Review and the Michigan Quarterly Review.She is the recipient of O. Henry Awards in 1993 and 1995 and a Teaching Excellence Recognition Award from Indiana University in 1997, as well as numerous scholarly fellowships. At AAS, Nixon conducted research for,Martha's Version, a novel telling the true story of her ancestor, Martha
Jane Carines, a Maryland woman who killed her fiancé in 1869 and was acquitted.

Barbara Weisberg is a television producer and children's writer. A New York resident, she has an extensive résumé featuring projects for CBS, HBO, the USA Network, and Nickelodeon, as well as numerous writing credits. She was creator of the syndicated situation comedy series Charles in Charge. As producer of Livewire, a
teenage talk show series on Nickelodeon, she won an Ace award for excellence in cable programming. Her writings include Coronado's Gold Quest, a nonfiction
children's book, and Susan B. Anthony, a young adult biography. She was also awarded the MacArthur Scholarship in Poetry on the recommendation of the late Allen Ginsburg. Weisberg conducted research on the Fox sisters while at AAS. To date, this research has resulted in an article that appeared in the September 1999 issue of American Heritage Magazine.

1997

Marilyn Arsem is a performance artist who lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Her previous solo performances include Stirring, Spinning, Sweeping and Dreams (breathe/don't.t breathe) oHome. Among her collaborative performances are The Burrow, with Malcolm Goldstein and Bart Uchida, and Clean Break, with Marilyn Gottlieb-Roberts. In addition, she was on the faculty of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and a lecturer at Tufts University. At AAS, Arsem conducted research on
nineteenth-century Spiritualism for a performance entitled Spirit Messages.

Pamela Keech is a visual artist from New York City. Her previous solo exhibitions include The Kitchen, a permanent installation at the Lower Eastside Tenement Museum, New York City, and Essence of Tenement at the Gracie Mansion, New York City. Some venues for her group exhibitions were the New Jersey Center for Visual Arts and the American Academy in Rome. Keech has also been a visiting artist at various universities, including the University of Connecticut at Storrs and San Diego State University.
Her project at AAS was "Nursuries," an installation depicting the lives of children in post-Civil War America.

Stephen O'Connor is a writer from New York City. O'Connor's previous work include the books Will My Name Be Shouted Out? Reaching Inner City Students Through the Power of Writing and Rescue, a collection of short stories. His essays and short stories have appeared in such journals as The Nation, Education Week, and The Quarterly.He also teaches fiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College. O'Connor will conduct research at AAS for a history entitled The Orphan Trains: Charles Loring Brace and the Migration of America's Poore Children -- 1853-1929.

1996

Robert J. Begiebing is a novelist who lives in Newfields, New Hampshire. His previous work includes the novel The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin, and with V. Own Grumbling, a critical study entitled The Literature of Nature: The British and American Traditions. His essays and poems have appeared in such publications as: Harvard Magazine, Country Journal, Boston Arts, Connecticut Quarterly, and the New Hampshire Times. At AAS, Begiebing conducted research for his book, The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton: Or, A Memoir of Startling and Amusing Episodes from Itinerant Life, published by the University Press of New England in November
of 1999.

Catherine Gammon is a fiction writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.Gammon's previous work includes the novel Isabel Out of the Rain. Her fiction has appeared in such journals as The North American Review, the Kenyon Review, Central Park, and Fiction International. She also served as fiction editor for Cape Discover, an anthology of fiction and poetry celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Gammon conducted research in the Esther Forbes Papers and the Cotton Mather collection at AAS for a novel about the Salem witchcraft trials.

John Lee is a playwright from Los Angeles, California. Lee's work includes the plays The Errand Boy, Dead Theater, Hitler's Head, Dog Days, and Clean Souls. His work has been performed by such theaters as the Mark Taper Forum, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and the Edinburgh Fringe
Festival. Lee's work at AAS concentrated on a play about the "O.Orphan Trains," o., on which orphaned and abandoned city children were sent West
in the nineteenth century.

Aubrey Wertheim is playwright from Oberlin, Ohio. His plays include
Costume Drama, Popular Neurotics and Make Way for
Dyklings. Popular
Neurotics was presented on PBS American Playhouse. Wertheim's work
has
been produced at the Cleveland Public Theatre and at the Mark Taper Forum.
He conducted research at AAS for a full-length one-woman show about Fanny
Fern, the first female American columnist.

Kimmika L.H. Williams is a performance poet from Darby, Pennsylvania.
Her
published works include: Envisioning A Sea of Dry Bones, Negro
Kinship to
the Park, Halley's Com and It Ain't Easy to be
Different.
Her produced
plays include: A Chained Foot Stumbling on a New World, Brown Ices:
Chocolate Drops and We the People: the Real Ones.
Williams's work at AAS
focused on the life and times of the first published African-American
poet, Lucy Terry, who wrote "Bars Fight" in 1746.

Andrea E. Woods is a dancer from Brooklyn, New York. She is currently
rehearsal director for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Her
other performance experience includes working with the Danny Sloan Dance
Company, and the Clive Thompson Dance Company. At AAS, Woods conducted
research on African-Americans in the West for a music/dance performance
piece entitled Ballad of the Black Cowboy.

1995

Laurie Block is a filmmaker from Conway, Massachusetts. She has produced and directed the film FIT: Episodes in the History of the
Body. Her screenwriting credits include The Great Depression and 1917: Revolution in Russia for National Geographic Society; The Last Plague: 1918 Flu Epidemic for HBO, and the independent films Secret Agent, and Are We Winning Mommy:
America and the Cold War among others. At AAS, she conducted picture research for a television documentary on the U.S.-Mexican War, 1846-1848, and also began research for a radio documentary entitled Beyond Affliction, which appeared on NPR.

Nancy Vieira Couto is a poet from Ithaca, New York. Her book, The Face in the Water, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize in 1989. Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Hudson Review, The Iowa Review, Milkweed Chronicle, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, and other magazines. At AAS, Couto conducted research for a book of poems and prose pieces on a nineteenth-century historical character who called herself America Vespucci.

Deborah H. DeFord is a writer and editor from Storrs, Connecticut. She has co-written with Harry S. Stout, An Enemy Among Them. She has also
written I Wonder Why Skunks Are So Smelly (and other neat facts about mammals) and is a contributing author to the textbook, New
Elementary Social Studies. While at AAS, she conducted research for a young-adult novel about the female American Revolutionary soldier, Deborah Sampson
Gannett.

Jeffrey A. Hatcher is a playwright from Minneapolis, Minnesota. His plays include Scotland Road, Neddy, Fellow Travelers, Tango Delta, Comfort and Joy, and Vandals. The Yale Repertory Theatre, the Actor's Theatre of Louisville, Cincinnati Playhouse-in-the-Park, and the Illinois Theater Center among others have performed Hatcher's work. His AAS project was a play, Sockdology, about the actors in the play Our American Cousin, which was being performed when Lincoln was assassinated.

Christina Tree is a writer and journalist based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has been a contributing editor and writer to the Berlitz Travelers Guide to New England, New England Living, Fodor's Boston, and the Boston Globe. Her books include How New England Happened, Massachusetts, An Explorer's Guide, and Best Places to Stay in New England. Her project at AAS was a history of New England tourism for the general public.