2024 FORGE FELLOWS
Africa House
Raven Cassell (she/her) is a theatremaker, artistic development strategist and NYU Tisch graduate student in Dramatic Writing based in NYC and West Africa. Her work is at the intersection of culture studies and storytelling. She describes herself as an Africanist Storyteller; making work dealing with African continental and diasporic concerns, affairs and themes — centering African storytelling methodologies, ideologies and technologies. Raven thinks critically about the containers we tell stories in and the resource pathways that support storytelling and art-making. Her work is invested in sustainable development in the arts in a West African context.
Photo by Quan Brinson
Nykita Garnett-Diggs (she/her) is the founder of Liberia’s first post conflict art agency, Creative Afrik, as well as a journalist and performing artist by training. Creative Afrik is an art agency cultivating an ecosystem of creative professionals and African inspired art lovers that is positive, progressive and profitable. This is realized through strategic planning and building mutually beneficial relationships in the arts & publishing through its products and services. Nykita’s sound is an exploration of soul across genres. From a young age, her outstanding talent and love of diverse music led her through classical music training in her adolescence to experimenting with African music styles globally. She is passionate about art education and collaborative creative processes.
Photo by Meskora Amoussou
Vee Bravo (he/him) is a New York native, by way of Chile, who has documented hip hop and Latinx culture for the past 25 years. In the mid-90s, he co-founded Stress Magazine and launched media education programs for incarcerated youth at Rikers Island. Bravo was hired by the late Albert Maysles to lead the Education Department at the Harlem-based Maysles Documentary Center. From 2011-2018, Bravo served as Vice President Education at Tribeca Film Institute. Here, Bravo spearheaded filmmaking programs that reached an excess of 30,000 students in public schools and prisons. As a filmmaker Bravo co-produced ESTILO HIP HOP, a PBS documentary that chronicles the rise of hip hop activism across Latin America. Most recently he directed and produced PRIMERA [2021] a documentary about the 2019 social uprising in Chile. The film has its national broadcast on HBO Max in September of 2022. He is currently in production on THE FRANCHISE [PBS / 2026], a documentary film about the sprawling prison economy in New York State. Bravo earned a BA in Latin America & Caribbean Area Studies from Binghamton University and a MS in Urban Policy from The New School University.
Photo by Erin O'Brien
Léa Fae (they/he/she) Léa Fae (they/he/she) is a writer/director/filmmaker based in NYC (occupied Lenapehoking). Their work emphasizes the queer and neurodivergent experience, often tackling tough subjects with humor and love. As a director Léa specializes in practical effects and stunt sequences. They are currently in development for their first feature film and have worked in New York City's film and television industry in a variety of roles for nearly a decade. Previous credits include: POSE, GOTHAM, NEW AMSTERDAM, WHEN THEY SEE US, THE SUN IS ALSO A STAR, THE AMERICANS, ESCAPE FROM DANNEMORA, and more.
Photo by Léa Fae
Sakinah Hofler (she/her) is a fiction writer, poet, and playwright. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Mid-American Review, among other literary journals, and her plays have been produced by Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. She has won the Yemasee Poetry Prize, the Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers in Fiction, the Manchester Fiction Prize, the C.P. Cavafy Poetry Prize, and the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award. She was named the 2023 winner of the Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices. Her work has received support from the Albert C. Yates Foundation, the Kingsbury Foundation, the de Groot Foundation, the Taft Research Center, and the P.E.O. Scholar Award. She has served the literary community in numerous roles that include first reader for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, staff member of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and assistant editor of the Cincinnati Review. A former chemical engineer for the United States Department of Defense, she currently teaches in the Writing Program at Princeton University. She’s at work on her first novel and her first short story colection.
Photo by Yvel Clovis
Maggie Keenan-Bolger (she/her) is a queer, disabled woman who grew up inner city Detroit. She attended Oberlin College where she created her first award-winning play, From the Inside, Out, which, after a successful run at the Fringe Festival, went on to complete an east-coast tour. Since then, she has worked extensively with LGBTQIA2S+ populations, including LGBTQIA2S+ homeless youth, inter-generational groups of LGBTQIA2S+ people, and GSAs in high schools. Her work was recognized by the White House when she was appointed an LGBT Leader of the Next Generation by then Vice President, Joe Biden. A two-time Point Foundation scholar, her pieces Queering History and Not Just Another Coming Out Story, were written in collaboration with LGBTQIA2S+ homeless youth who performed alongside of Broadway performers. She was named a "Person to Watch" in the Advocate in 2015. Keenan-Bolger has worked as a teaching artist with organizations such as Urban Stages, The Creative Arts Team and The Leadership Program and was also a sex educator with the "I Love Female Orgasm" program. Maggie has a Masters in Applied Theatre from CUNY/SPS and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College. In 2012 she founded Honest Accomplice Theatre (HAT) who created multiple shows performing in NYC as well as all along the east coast. HAT also created the Trans Literacy Project, currently used as an educational tool around the world. HAT was supported by The Ford Foundation and their work is currently utilized by the New York City Commission on Human Rights.
Photo by Robert Mannis
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Believing in music's transformative power, Migiwa "Miggy" Miyajima (she/her), a Grammy-nominated producer, composer, pianist, and leader of both the 17-piece Miggy Augmented Orchestra and the four-piece KYMN, creates works that resonate with human souls. Her goal is to unite deeply through music that sings life's joys and sorrows. Her compositions, characterized by contemporary jazz languages and nuances of her Japanese heritage, embody her signature across diverse genres including classical music, pop, and soul. Showcasing the boundless gifts of her featured musicians by her signature ensemble music, she seeks to highlight the unique colors that all human beings contribute to society. After surviving the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, Miyajima received a Japanese government grant and a Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Fellowship, and relocated to the US. Miggy Augmented Orchestra released its ArtistShare debut album “Colorful” in 2018. In March 2021, Miyajima released a book with accompanying music entitled “Your Future Story” as a first product of her year-long “Unbreakable Hope and Resilience” project, based on the real stories of survivors and volunteers of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Miyajima's dedication is underscored by works with leading artists such as NEA Jazz Master the late Slide Hampton, The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, and Mike Holober. Her recognition includes prestigious awards, including the 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, the 2020 NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre, and the 2023 MacDowell Fellowship.
Photo by Hayato Sakurai
wayward
wayward is an arts+politics collective dedicated to smuggling anti-capitalist & anti-fascist ideas into our local community to inspire and support revolutionary change. We like to call it an undisciplined home for radical plotting.
wayward was founded by Jennifer Tamayo (JT) and Sean Patrick Cain, who run the collective from their home.
JT (they/them) is a formerly undocumented poet, essayist, and performer. They often teach writing.
Sean (he/they) is an educator, visual artist, and analog game designer. They often teach teachers.
wayward’s work connects political education with practices of care and pleasure. For us, that education happens at the cinema, in the garden, on the dance floor, and at the game table. wayward screens movies, prints zines, throws dinner parties, hosts tabletop gaming events, and welcomes rad artists to stay at our home for short residencies focusing on land care and stewardship. wayward is a messy little art space – multidisciplinary, intergenerational, casual, unpredictable – whose goings-on are always free, intimate, and designed to build community connections.
As a collective founded on decolonial values, our long-term goal is to rematriate the 2.5 acres of land the house is on.
Photos by Sean Patrick Cain
Yannick Trapman-O'Brien (he/him) is a Performer, Theatermaker, and Creative Hand for Hire. His practice centers on exploring unorthodox invitations to and applications for performance, and the exchanges we are willing to make with strangers. He is the creator of a series of critically acclaimed immersive experiences, including the award-winning and long-running telephone experience "The Telelibrary." His pieces have been official selections at La Jolla Playhouse's Without Walls Festival, as well as the Denver, True/False, and Overlook Film Festivals, and No Proscenium declared his work "a North Star" in the industry for creating responsive and deeply personal encounters for audiences of one at a time. As a consultant, he helps organizations shape engagement and think critically about the exchanges they make with their constituents, from single events to workshops to BFA programs. He is a Project Specialist at Monument Lab, recently serving as Programming Coordinator for the Pulling Together Exhibition, part of the Beyond Granite initiative on the National Mall. Yannick received his BA in Theater from NYU Abu Dhabi, training at The Experimental Theater Wing in New York, the Studies in Shakespeare program at RADA in London, and the International Theater Workshop in Amsterdam. Past performance credits include include training and work with Theater Mitu, Witness Relocation and the Interactive Playlab, appearances at The Walnut Street Theater, The American Czech Theater, New Light Theater, the Franklin Institute, and Morris Jumel Mansion, and collaborations with Public Movement (2016) and Amalia Pica (2017) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Occasionally, he sleeps.
Photo by Billy B Photography
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