2026 Writing in Color Fellow
Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi (she/ella) is a Latina poet, writer, professor, and minister based in Aurora, Colorado. She is currently working on a poetry collection centered on the fractured yet indivisible tethers of identity and family related to race, gender, immigration, and religion, drawing connections to U.S. histories and present events. Kristina is the winner of Fragmentation Magazine's 2025 Micro Fiction Contest and is an active member of Lighthouse Writers Workshop.
2025 Writing in Color Fellow
Terri Bissonette, an enrolled citizen of the Gnoozhekaaning Anishinaabe and a descendant of the Little Traverse Band of Odawa, is a longtime educator, youth champion, and community organizer. She is currently working on her debut novel, inspired by her mom’s experience at Holy Childhood Boarding School in Harbor Springs, Michigan. Terri lives in Denver with her two kids and three dogs and feels blessed to have her mom, sister, niece, and nephew living nearby. Terri has been taking classes at Lighthouse for the past couple of years and has learned and grown so much as a writer. She’s excited to be a part of furthering the Indigenous tradition of storytelling and is deeply grateful for the writers and teachers at Lighthouse for helping her acquire the necessary skills to tell a compelling story.
2024 Writing in Color Fellow
Akusua A. Akoto, by way of South Oak Cliff, Dallas, is a Black disabled writer, facilitator, volunteer, and advocate. She is currently working on a manuscript centered around herself, her mother, and grandmother, with a focus on mental health, poverty, Black mother-daughter relationships, and survival.
2023 Writing in Color Fellow
Katerina Jeng (she/they) is a writer, community leader, and weaver of the sacred into the everyday. She is here to help guide humanity into a new paradigm world through humble service that is abundantly joyful, pleasurable, and free. Katerina’s poetry explores love and power, and is inspired by her identity as a queer, Filipina-Taiwanese-American femme, as well as the work of artists and activists of color that have come before her.
Currently, Katerina is preparing to publish their debut poetry collection. They are the Co-Founder & Strategic Director of Spectacle, a leading inclusive marketing & communications agency. Katerina’s work has been celebrated in People, CBS News, Talks at Google, TEDx, Creative Mornings, HuffPo, and more. You can support their creative practice by subscribing to their newsletter, and befriending them on Instagram @katerinajeng.
2021 Writing in Color Fellow
Nafeesa Syeed is a writer in Los Angeles. She spent 15 years as a journalist, working in the U.S., Middle East, North and East Africa, and South Asia. She's currently a visiting scholar at UCLA. Previously, she held fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania and Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She earned her B.A. from Georgetown University and M.A. in Comparative Literature from SOAS-University of London. She's at work on her first novel. Follow her @NafeesaSyeed.
2020 Writing in Color Book Project Fellow
Jeneé Skinner is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She also went abroad to the University of Oxford to study Renaissance Literature and the Italian Renaissance. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Catapult, Roxane Gay’s The Audacity, Missouri Review, and elsewhere. Additionally, she won Michigan Quarterly Review’s Jesmyn Ward Prize and was a finalist for the Black Warrior Review’s Fiction Contest. She has received additional fellowships from Tin House Summer Workshop and Kimbilio Writers Retreat. Her work has been nominated for Best Microfiction, Best of the Net, and a Pushcart. Her interests include swamps, haunted houses, folklore, family sagas, epics, and poetic prose. You can find her on Twitter @SkinnerJenee or Instagram @jskin94.
2019 Writing in Color Fellow
Joe Ponce is from Joliet, Illinois. He holds an MFA from Columbia University, and his work has been published in Anathema Magazine, Blunderbuss Magazine, and Apogee Journal. He has taught for the Fulbright Commission in eastern Turkey, and has also taught in La Rioja, Spain. He is currently at work on a speculative thriller about disappearances, family secrets, obsessions, and mania in Midwestern America. He lives in Denver, CO, volunteers with Casa De Paz, an immigrant assistance organization, and tweets sparingly from @AppearingMerely.