Writers & Artists Grant Recipients
2026 Recipients
Marco Lanier (he/him) is an independent archivist based in New York City. He holds an MA in Sociology from The New School for Social Research (‘19) and an MS LIS from Simmons University (‘24). His project, “Fort Hill Faggots for Freedom Oral History Project,” explores the history and politics of the Fort Hill Faggots for Freedom (FHFF), a collective of gay men that established a commune in the Fort Hill neighborhood of Boston in the 1970s. The collective sought to build a new gay identity that transcended repressive paradigms of gender, sexuality, race, domesticity, and capitalism through “militant solidarity” and “loving confrontation.” By conducting oral histories and assembling archival materials, his project addresses the neglected history of gay and lesbian liberation in Boston and ensures that FHFF’s legacy of radical queer politics endures. His article for The G&LR will be published in a future issue.
Kit Pyne-Jaeger (they/them) is a PhD candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, researching temporality, historical reception, and gender and sexuality, in assorted configurations, in Victorian literature and culture. Their work has received the Sally Mitchell Prize from the North American Victorian Studies Association, the Lambda Classical Caucus’ Graduate Student Paper Award, and an honorable mention for the John J. Winkler Memorial Essay Prize. Alongside their research, they are the managing editor of the medical humanities journal Synapsis and a copyeditor for the speculative fiction magazine Strange Horizons. Their project, tentatively titled “Queer Fantasies and Archival Shadows of the Nineteenth Century,” explores how queer writers and thinkers in the Victorian and Edwardian periods (1850-1930) made use of the imaginative potential of archival objects, particularly the affordances of archival loss, erasure, and limitation, to construct alternative histories of queer sexual and intellectual life. Their article for The G&LR will be published in a future issue.
Cassandra Gillig (she/her) is a writer, editor, curator and MFA/MA creative non-fiction student at Northwestern University, where she is working on an abolitionist history of gay policing and studies LGBT print culture. Gillig is the Bibliographical Society of America’s 2026 Blahnk New Scholar and was a 2024 Phil Zwickler Fellow at Cornell University. Gillig’s project, “Stop the Movie ‘Cruising’” examines gay liberation politics and organizing in the last years before the AIDS crisis through a history of the mass protests against the filming and release of the 1980 movie Cruising. Her article for The G&LR will be published in a future issue.
2025 Recipients
Ipek Sahinler (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches as an Assistant Instructor at the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies. Originally a translator from Istanbul, her dissertation is about Queer Global South, particularly the intersections between modern Turkish and Mexican literature. In addition to academic writing, she bridges queer theories and practices by delivering open-to-all seminars about queer Turkish literature, and runs the virtual, reading group called “Turkish Literature in Translation.” Sahinler’s project, titled “Unveiling James Baldwin’s Queer Kinship Circles in 1960s Turkey,” explores a crucial aspect of Baldwin’s life that remains largely overlooked: his nearly decade-long residency in Turkey from 1961 to 1972—a period that profoundly shaped many of his novels and short stories. Her article for The G&LR, “Baldwin in Turkey, Directing a Play,” can be found here.
Keira Roberson (she/her) is a PhD candidate in History concluding her fourth year at Georgia State University. Her master’s degree thesis at UNC Charlotte studied the tactics that queer Berliners used to protect themselves and their communities under the Nazi Regime. Her dissertation builds upon this research and continues into the postwar era. Roberson’s project, titled “After Fascism, Before Liberation: Queer Life in East and West Berlin, 1945-1969,” examines the reconstitution of queer networks and how the experience of queer community changed in Berlin between the end of the Second World War in 1945 and decriminalization of homosexuality in 1969. She anticipates that she will defend her dissertation in July 2026. Her proposal description and bio can be found below and her article for The G&LR, “Lotte Hahm’s Germany,” can be found here.
Proposal Description & Bio 2025 – Roberson
Emma O’Neill-Dietel (she/they) is a master’s student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst studying 20th century American social movements with a focus on gender and sexuality. Emma’s work has been published in Social Education, the flagship journal of the National Council for the Social Studies, and Boundary Stones, a local history publication of WETA, D.C.’s PBS station. Her project titled “Signs of Pride: Deaf LGBTQ+ Activism in Washington, D.C., 1979-Present,” explores solidarity between the LGBTQ+ community and the d/Deaf community at the local and national level. This research resulted in a digital exhibit with the Rainbow History Project (RHP) archive, along with an interactive map. Their proposal description can be found below, and their article for The G&LR will be published in a future issue.
Project Descriptions 2025 – O’Neill-Dietel
2024 Recipients
Taylor E. Hartson (they/them), a Sociology PhD Student at the University of Notre Dame and a goat-wrangler farmer, and Patricia Mathu (she/her), an Anthropology MA Student at the University of Alabama and a founding member of a queer- and youth-led farm,
are building on dissertation research through their multimedia publication titled Playing in The Dirt. Their project focuses on queer Midwestern farmers/growers and their unique experiences navigating agricultural networks, resources, and communities. They share the stories they collected through 70+ interviews in a book of art and writing by and for queer farmers. This publication will provide much needed queer-created and queer-centric resources for growers and elevate the voices of LGBTQ+ people in rural areas. Recently published by Combos Press, their book, Playing in The Dirt, can be purchased here. Their proposal description and bios can be found below and their article for The G&LR, “Farmers Are Us, Too,” can be found here.
Proposal Description & Bios 2024 – Hartson & Mathu.pdf
Hugo Ljungbäck (he/him) is a filmmaker, archivist, and media scholar. His research examines the intersections of experimental film and video, queer cinema, and media preservation. He is a PhD Student in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago, and his project is titled “Private Visions: Amateur Films, Home Movies, and Queer Self-Representation.” His project explores queer amateur film production and home moviemaking between the late 1930s and 1960s and demonstrates that reconsidering queer amateur films is not only important for the history of queer cinema, especially when so much else has been lost, they are also crucial visual archives of mid-century queer life that articulate an alternative vision of queer visibility. His proposal description and bio can be found below and his article for The G&LR, “The Lives They Filmed,” can be found here.
Proposal Description & Bio 2024 – Ljungbäck.pdf
2023 Recipients
Cait Parker (she/her) is a Ph.D. Student in American Studies with a concentration in Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Purdue University, and she works to introduce a new generation to their queer past through her teaching and research. Her project is titled “‘Don’t Let Them Bury Us’: Lesbian Revolutionaries in the Prison Abolition Movement” and focuses on revolutionary lesbian activists and their work within the prison abolition movement in the 1980s-2000s. Her proposal description can be found below and her article for The G&LR, “Lesbians Against Incarceration,” can be found here.
Proposal Description 2023 – Parker.pdf
Gervais Marsh (they/them) is writer, scholar and curator raised in Kingston, Jamaica, whose work is rooted in Black Feminism and
deeply invested in Black life, concepts of relationality, and care. They are a PhD Student in Performance Studies at Northwestern University, and their project is titled “Intimate Notes: Patric McCoy’s Archive of Black Gay Life in Chicago.” Their focus is on artist Patric McCoy’s photographic archive as a meditation on the histories of Black queer life and intimacy in Chicago from the 1970’s to 1980’s, while also grappling with the impacts HIV/AIDS had on Black communities and the contemporary Black artistic landscape. Their proposal description and bio can be found below and their article for The G&LR, “Momentos of Desire,” can be found here.
Proposal Description & Bio 2023 – Marsh.pdf
Lucas Belury (he/him/él) is a PhD Student in Geography at the University of Arizona interested in centering the lived experience of communities on the margins. His project is titled “Queer Survival in 20th Century South Texas” and chronicles the queer history of San Antonio, TX in the 1970s and early 1980s, and reveals how LGBTQ+ life was shaped by a politics of respectability that reconstituted explicitly queer spaces, palatable to heteronormative society. He hopes to “honor the legacy of queer advocates—namely trans folks of color—who paved the way for [gay] liberation.” His proposal description and bio can be found below and his article for The G&LR, “Safety on Trial in San Antonio,” can be found here.
