ACT selects first cohort of Providence writers to attend the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA
ACT selects first cohort of Providence writers to attend the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA
In winter 2026, ACT launched a new scholarship program in partnership with the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. The scholarship supports four Providence writers in attending a weeklong summer writing workshop at the Fine Arts Work Center free of cost.
A panel featuring local writers and ACT staff awarded writers Justice Ameer, Sean Richardson, Vikki Warner, and Ellen Zahniser with the four summer writing scholarships.
Writers will receive scholarships that will provide free tuition and housing as well as a $500 stipend to help defray the costs of transportation and food associated with taking a writing workshop.
FAWC’s signature summer workshop program offers 36 week-long, open-enrollment creative writing workshops over the course of nine weeks of summer. All workshops are taught by nationally recognized writers. Previous teachers include Terrence Hayes, Carmen Maria Machado, Major Jackson, Melissa Febos, Alexander Chee, Porsha Olayiwola, and Vievee Francis. A week at FAWC offers a variety of readings, artist talks and special events that are free and open to the public.
MEET THE WRITERS
Justice Ameer (Poetry)
Justice Ameer is a poet, facilitator, and political educator in Providence, RI. Xe is a co-founding member of blackearth collective + lab. Xe is a two-time Providence Grand Slam champion, and an inaugural co-champion of the Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam. In Spring 2020, xe was an Artist-in-Residence at Williams College. Xe is a Pink Door Fellow and Faculty member, and LOBA Lab Performance Fellow. Ameer has performed at venues across the country including ANTHEM at American Repertory Theatre’s OBERON and Canon | Canyon | Cannon at Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Xyr work can be found in Split This Rock, the Academy of American Poets, POETRY magazine, The Shade Journal, The Nation, and anthologies The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic and Between Paradise & Earth: Eve Poems among others.
Sean Richardson (Creative Nonfiction/Essay)
Born in Rhode Island and growing up in Pawtucket, Sean Richardson is a product of both the public school system and internet culture, establishing himself as an online voice in his community as early as 2011. Being born under an Aries sun, Sean is confident and passionate, but also requires someone to pull him back down to earth, sometimes.
Sean has an exciting personality. From being told he was a talkative child with an overactive imagination, to channeling it all into personal essays as an adult — Sean absorbs the world and regurgitates it in his own authentic way.
Sean’s mission has remained the same over the years: to use his voice and empower the voices of others to tell their stories in their most authentic, emotional way.
Vikki Warner (Nonfiction/Essay)
Vikki Warner (she/her) is the author of the memoir Tenemental: Adventures of a Reluctant Landlady, published by The Feminist Press. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Hyperallergic, Literary Hub, BUST, The Ocean State Review, and We’ll Never Have Paris, and in local media like Providence Monthly and the bygone Providence Phoenix. Her personal essay “Until They Shine” appeared in the anthology If Memory Serves: Stories from the Table. Vikki has worked as an acquisitions editor with Blackstone Publishing since 2013, and in audiobook publishing since 2006. She holds an MA in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College and a BA in English from the University of Rhode Island. She lives in Federal Hill, Providence, stubbornly remains an owner-occupant landlord and friend of working-class housing, and posts (infrequently) on IG @pennhenge.
Ellen Zahniser (Performance writing)
Ellen Zahniser is a Providence-based performing artist and writer with a BA in Theatre Arts and Performance Studies from Brown University. They have received support from RISCA with a Make Art Grant and attended residencies at Hewnoaks, The Wedding Cake House, and Art Farm. Ellen’s work has been presented at FringePVD, The Wilbury Group, AS220, The Dirt Palace, Vanishing Performance Festival (NOLA), Philly Fringe, The Brick (NYC), and other delightful locales around the east coast! As an actor, Ellen has participated in various theatrical extravaganzas with Tiresias (NYC), Center Aquidneck, Strange Attractor, The Wilbury Theatre Group, and Brown University. Ellen’s writing has also been featured at the Word Shelter at The Wedding Cake House and in Urgency Reader 2 (Queer Archive Work). They focus on themes of corporeal malfunction, technology, self-ness, queer transgression, spirituality, and animacy, developing interdisciplinary performances through a rigorous process of research, writing, improvisation, and collaborative dialogue with other artists. Ellen ultimately sees performance as one of many diverse tactics of world building in a generative ecosystem of kinship.
About FAWC
The Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC) in Provincetown, MA is a non-profit organization dedicated to encouraging the growth and development of emerging visual artists and writers and to enhancing the year-round vitality of the historic art community of Provincetown. The Work Center was founded in 1968 by a group of artists who envisioned a place in Provincetown, MA, the country’s most enduring artists’ community, where artists and writers could live and work together in the early phase of their careers.