Community Storytelling Fellowship

Supporting Oregonians in sharing stories from their communities

A photo showing two seated Black men talking while a third, standing to the side, operates a camera.

Bruce Poinsette, center, interview Mac Smiff while Ifanyi Bell operates the camera. Photo by Intisar Abioto, 2022.

We are excited to announce the recipients of the 2023 Community Storytelling Fellowship, which supports people who belong to communities that are underrepresented in Oregon media in sharing stories from those communities. The six fellowship projects will each receive $5,000, and stories will be presented in Oregon Humanities magazine, on the Oregon Humanities website, or on The Detour

Oregon Humanities magazine and our other publications explore the ideas and experiences of Oregonians. The goal of this fellowship is to provide time and space for sharing stories and questions that might otherwise not be possible as part of our mission to connect people and communities to inspire understanding and collaborative change.

We hope the stories shared through this fellowship will allow more Oregonians to see their experiences represented, fill information gaps, and encourage readers to work toward a more inclusive and civically engaged state. We hope fellows will develop as storytellers and build connections within their communities.

This program is made possible thanks to generous support from the Ford Family Foundation.

 

2024 Fellows

Enrique Bautista (Woodburn) is a proud husband and father, a certified recovery mentor, fitness trainer, and cofounder of TAG (Taking Accountability Group), a program created at the Oregon State Penitentiary to provide at-risk youth the necessary tools for better decision-making. Although two decades of his life were spent in the Oregon Department Corrections, he made the conscious decision to look at prison as a learning center, where he discovered his passion for learning and the arts. Through his fellowship project, he hopes to represent the nameless faces of those still incarcerated and everyone who has overcome adversity. 

 

Diana Marcela Cuartas (East Portland) is a Colombian artist, educator, and cultural worker transplanted to Portland in 2019. Her work incorporates visual research, popular culture analysis, and participatory learning processes to investigate the relationships formed between a place and those who inhabit it. With her projects, Diana is interested in cultivating spaces inviting people to slow down, think together, share questions, and have fun to weave community and a sense of belonging. Diana plans to use her fellowship to collaborate with people living in Rockwood and the adjacent neighborhoods on the border between Portland and Gresham. You can find more about Diana at marcelacuartas.com.

 

Sarah Fox (Hood River) is the creator of the Hear in the Gorge podcast and curator/host of the Sense of Place event series. As a multimedia producer, her work has appeared on Oregon Public Broadcasting in addition to film and audio stories for businesses, non-profits, Northwest tribes, governmental agencies, and individuals. Her work has included wide-ranging topics like tribal fishing, Woody Guthrie, avant-garde art, vegan trailblazers, and river restoration. And her commitment to the rural communities of the Gorge reflect her own upbringing in Oregon. As a fellow Sarah plans to share stories about the working lives of people in Hood River County. You can find more about Sarah at sarahfoxhere.com

 

Andre Gray (Portland) is an experienced filmmaker and Deaf advocate. He is the founder of the ASL-based streaming platform Beyond Tone, co-artistic director of the nonprofit CymaSpace, and co-chair of the board of directors of the media arts center Open Signal. Andre also serves as a board member or director of organizations like the Portland Deaf Film Festival. He is expanding creative communication access for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community with an emphasis on advocating for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ representation, increasing access in documentary, podcasts, and virtual reality. His fellowship project will explore the role and significance of Black American Sign Language in Deaf communities locally and around the country.

 

Joon Ae Haworth-Kaufka (Portland) is a Korean adoptee who was born in Seoul and grew up outside of Detroit. Chapters of her novel-in-progress have been published in Hyphen Magazine, The Work & Response, The Plentitudes, Mochi Magazine, and the Bellevue Literary Review. She is a cofounder and organizer of the Constellation reading seriesVOICES, a BIPOC Adoptee Community; and Yeondae, and she sits on the board of Income Movement. She is the 2007 winner of the AWP Intro Journals Award, a two-time Tin House workshop participant, and an Anaphora Arts alumna.  Intercountry adoption is a multibillion-dollar industry that started in Oregon. Through this fellowship, Joon Ae wants to amplify adoptee issues through a series of essays and social media posts.

 

Astra Lincoln (Portland) works at the intersection of people, power, and place. A graduate of the Banff Centre's Mountain Writing program, her work has been nominated for inclusion in Best American Essays, recognized with a Banff Mountain Book Competition Best Essay award, and included on several Best of the Year reading lists. Astra volunteers as a facilitator with Write Around Portland and as a faculty member of the Juneau Icefield Research Program, where she teaches creative writing workshops. As a Community Storytelling Fellow, Astra will produce a series of essays on disability and belonging in the context of climate migration and crisis.

 

Frances T. (Seal Rock) moved to a rural community on the Oregon coast in August 2023 so that Emma, her transgender teenage daughter, could continue to receive lifesaving, gender-affirming care. Their home state of Alabama recently passed laws making that care illegal. Frances is lucky to be able to telecommute to her job, but she misses her home, her husband, and her oldest daughter, who is a senior in high school. As a fellow, she plans to write about the experiences of families, including her own, who've relocated to Oregon to access gender-affirming healthcare and the impacts this migration is having on local systems and services. For privacy and safety reasons, her photo has not been shared, and she currently writes under a pen name.

 

Past Fellows and Stories

Melissa Bennett (Silverton)

Derek DeForest (Ashland)

Hector Flores (Talent)

Nella Mae Parks (Cove), Ana Maria Rodriguez (Boardman), and Rafael Romero (Boardman)

Jennifer Perrine (Portland)

Bruce Poinsette (Tigard)

Stacey Rice (Portland)

Yanely Rivas (Salem)

Tags

Civic Life, Community, Media and Journalism, Journalism, Statewide, Storytelling

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