I write as someone who never felt empowered to take up space. My mother became pregnant with me at 16. I spent most of my young childhood sleeping four to a cramped room. Meanwhile, reading and writing helped me crack the world open. One of my greatest challenges and greatest joys in writing is in shaping a world that feels as authentic and dynamic as the world(s) we occupy. I write the past/present/future of space, which resists idealization, even as that idealization remains. All land is rife with the racial, sociocultural, economic, and political struggles that are always at play alongside the beauty of existence. This is what guides my writing, my teaching, and my grassroots work. I question what it means to love a place without ignoring or erasing its diversity and its faults. I think it’s important that we as artists and writers interrogate how we bring our spaces to life enough for this reckoning.

I’m receiving this reward on the tail end of my PhD program. As I have been preparing to graduate and go on the job market, I’ve questioned whether I would still be able to carve out enough time to continue writing. I’m grateful to the National Endowment for the Arts for seeing merit in my work and providing funding that will allow me to buy a little more time and space to keep creating.