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MARCH 2024
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We're Hiring!
The Fellows Program along with the #ShareTheMicInCyber Program are accepting applications for a paid communications intern. Interested candidates should apply here.
Thank you for sharing this opportunity with qualified students.
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Three questions with...
2024 Fellow Sian-Pierre Regis
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Your Fellows project will be a podcast called Raising Adults, which will tell the stories of families living multi-generationally. Can you share the genesis of this project?
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In 2021, I theatrically released a personal documentary film about my mom. Three days later, she moved into the NYC apartment I shared with my gay partner because she had nowhere else to turn. Without any savings and a significant rise in housing costs, it made more sense for her to live with us than struggle to find inadequate housing at an inflated price. For me, questions abounded. How would I care for and support this 78 year old woman? Would this be temporary, indefinite or permanent? How will this affect my relationship with my partner…how will it affect her?
I began to tape moments in the home as a way of processing this dynamic shift happening around me. And then, all of a sudden, it hit me that multi-generational housing is fast-becoming the new norm in a country that for so long taught us to send our elders off to some faraway place. And so I began to reach out to others who are living multi-gen by choice, circumstance or culture.
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Your film, Duty Free, addressed some of the same themes that will be explored in the podcast. How did you decide to pursue this project as a podcast? Has anything surprised you while working in this different medium?
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After the success of Duty Free, I heard from hundreds of people whose parents passed. They expressed how much they wished they could have had the experiences I shared with my mom on film. I realized time was precious, and that I didn’t want to have a camera in between my mom and me in her last act…that I always wanted to be looking at her directly in the eye. And so, I thought that audio was the best way to be present in any moment with both her and my partner.
But audio also best serves my assumed audience. If this is a podcast that aims to reach listeners who understand what it’s like to be a caregiver, or are preparing for a role reversal soon, then they’re busy! And I hope that audio allows them to go on about their day while also giving them subjects and stories that help them feel seen, understood, and prepared for this burgeoning rite of passage.
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What’s your best piece of advice for families living multi-generationally?
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Gosh. Be patient always. Communicate with kindness. Assume best intentions. And be creative about small ways in which you can have fun together. Because, in our best moments, the experiences I have with my partner and my mom at my side are the ones I hope to replay, and the stories I hope to retell, for decades to come.
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On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America
The definitive account of what massive population shift due to climate change might look like.
Available for pre-order through our bookselling partner Solid State Books here.
By: Abrahm Lustgarten, Class of 2021
Learn More
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Fellows share advice for the next generation of journalists.
1: Approach each project with (perhaps excessive) confidence, and accept feedback with humility and grace. — Jessica Pishko, Class of 2023
2: Be sure you really want to do it. There are more stable (and lucrative) professions. If you really love journalism, it's absolutely worth doing. But it's not always going to be fun or easy. — Jason Zengerle, Class of 2023
3: Don't be afraid to start over. Ask for help. Support other people. Don't let anyone else define your success for you. Be willing to be vulnerable.
— Laura Mauldin, Class of 2024
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Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie's film, Sugarcane, was purchased by National Geographic Films. The film will receive a theatrical release and will stream on Disney+.
Patricia Evangelista's book, Some People Need Killing, was longlisted for the inaugural Women's Prize for Non-Fiction. The book was also longlisted for the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.
Rozina Ali wrote a story for the New York Times Magazine about three Palestinian students shot in Vermont.
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The top New America events we recommend you check out. Now.
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MAR 7TH
Language City
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Join the Fellows Program for an event with Ross Perlin, Class of 2023, in conversation about his new book with Atossa A. Abrahamian, Class of 2024. Learn more.
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APR 3RD
On the Move
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Join the Fellows Program for an event with Abrahm Lustgarten, Class of 2021, in conversation about his new book with Jeff Goodell, Class of 2016. Learn more.
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This book is a hilarious and clever send-up of a very familiar character (particularly to those of us who have covered international affairs)!
— Atossa Araxaia Abrahamian,
Class of 2024
Learn More
Mosi Secret, Class of 2018, is a gifted storyteller who is showing me a world far from the one I inhabit but telling of an injustice all too universal.
— Melissa Segura,
Class of 2019
Learn More
This is a fabulous history of anti-poverty activism that connects the thinking about fighting poverty in the US in the 1960s to foreign policy and global development efforts in the prior decades. Genius work about the creation of global poverty as a liberal concern and the scholars who thought they could fix it!
— Marcia Chatelain,
Class of 2017
Learn More
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