Meet the Fine Arts Work Center Scholarship Recipients
This year, the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture and City of Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola have partnered with the Fine Arts Work Center to offer full scholarships to six emerging writers.
Writers will spend one week in Provincetown, Massachusetts writing and studying under a poet of their choice in summer 2023. Tuition and lodging are covered via the scholarship.
To be considered for the scholarship, artists had to have lived or worked in the city of Boston for at least the last two years. The scholarship was available to emerging writers between the ages of 18 and 35, or writers who have published no more than one book.
Learn more about the six scholarship recipients below:
Durane West, spoken word artist and educator, was born and raised in Boston. He channels intense imagery and intuitive emotional exploration to showcase transparency in his writing. Through versatile form usage and raw introspective diction, West offers his readers a sneak peek into his closeted mind.
West has several years of experience working in the nonprofit sector for organizations that aim to improve literacy skills for inner city youth throughout Boston. As an educator, West not only challenges his students, but also challenges himself to ask questions and chase the metaphysical in life and on the page.
Briana Crockett is a Boston native. She started writing in second grade, and soon after started performing. Her writing was nurtured by her mother, teachers, her imagination, and observations. Briana kept up with writing from grade school and expanded on it in college. Her poetry has been recognized in academic journals and a conference or two. In 2020, Briana released The Growing Place and has since had poems published in a number of online publications. She is now a host at the Cantab as a part of the Boston Poetry Slam staff. You can learn more about her on her website.
JR Mahung (She/They) is a Garifuna poet from the South Side of Chicago. She now lives in Boston, MA where she writes, meal preps, and works as an educator. JR’s second collection of poems, Since When He Have Wings, is available through Pizza Pi Press.
Georgie Contreras is a Latina writer raised and residing in the Boston area. Her poetry has been published in The Ana, with work forthcoming from Malposition Magazine. You can usually find her journaling, firing off professional wrestling hot takes on Twitter, or reading a book from the local library– all while clocked in at her retail job.
Elle Chu is an Emerson College alumni, California native, and current Boston inhabitant. She was a 2019 recipient of the Leonard A. Slade Jr. Fellowship from Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and her work can be found in The Fjords Review, The Kindling Collective, Fearsome Critters: The Laurel Review, and the CAGIBI literary magazine. She is currently a Poetry Reader for Consequence Forum and working on personal creative projects ranging from drawing, researching culinary history, and getting her dog to pose in tasteful portraits.
Blue Nguyen (he/they) is a Vietnamese non-binary lesbian poet and community organizer based out of Boston, MA. They have been nominated for Best of the Net Anthology and Best New Poets Anthology. Their poetry can be found at The Mantle Poetry, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Protean Magazine, Prolit Magazine, DEAR Poetry Journal, Peach Mag, and more. You can find them on Instagram and on Twitter.
