Hand Papermaking, Inc. is pleased to announce the winners of our 2022–23 Black Writers Fellowships: Gimbiya Kettering, Black Writers Fellowship: Reporter; and Sadé Powell, Black Writers Fellowship: Researcher. The two fellows were chosen after responding to our national call for proposals this past summer.

Hand Papermaking launched its Black Writers Fellowship program in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives as a concrete step to counteract social inequities and to reflect the full breadth of work in our field. The Black Writers Fellowship: Reporter is an opportunity for a Black writer to identify, research, and write a short-form article profiling an artist, community, studio, or organization in the field of hand papermaking. The Black Writers Fellowship: Researcher is an opportunity for a Black writer to research and write a long-form article to be published in Hand Papermaking magazine.

The Fellows

Gimbiya Kettering’s love of paper starts with books. As an avid reader and writer, she pursued an MFA in creative writing, and her work has appeared in literary journals and regional magazines. Her fellowships and continued studies include Callaloo, James Merrill House, VONA, the Writer’s Center, and Yaddo. She has also done extensive antiracism work. Raising her family in Washington, DC, Kettering is fortunate to be surrounded by the Smithsonian museums and a vibrant local arts community. Kettering will conduct interviews and produce a profile of the artist Cheryl E. Edwards, a printmaker who is currently delving into hand papermaking, and was Hand Papermaking’s inaugural 2020–2021 Black Writers Fellowship: Reporter.

Sadé Powell is a concrete poet from New York exploring meaning-making through print and paper techniques. Inspired by her upbringing, she uses the sonic, kinesthetic, and linguistic elements of her 1940s typewriter to muck up words and language. Powell holds an MA in Performance Studies at NYU Tisch. Her first-ish chapbook wordtomydead is forthcoming with Ugly Duckling Presse. For her project Powell will research Black Feminist Poethics and the ways in which black women artists have been drawn to the generative and world-building practice of hand papermaking.

About Hand Papermaking

Hand Papermaking, Inc. is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing traditional and contemporary ideas in the art of hand papermaking through Hand Papermaking, its biannual magazine with tipped-in hand-made paper samples, the quarterly Hand Papermaking Newsletter, and its series of limited-edition portfolios showcasing works by contemporary practitioners and artists working in handmade paper. To learn more about the organization, visit www.handpapermaking.org. To learn more about Hand Papermaking’s Black Writers Fellowship program, visit https://www.handpapermaking.org/get-involved/fellowships.

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