Today, we welcome 15 Class of 2025 New America Fellows. This Class includes writers, scholars, filmmakers, and, for the first time, a video game producer all dedicated to enhancing conversations around the most pressing issues of our time.
This special issue of the Fifth Draft features all members of our new cohort, which we hope you will enjoy. Meet the Class of 2025 here.
Please also take a look at the many highlights from the Class of 2024 here.
Awista Ayub
Director, Fellows Program
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Three questions with...
2025 Emerson Collective Fellow Megan Garber
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Your Fellows project will be a book, which expands on an article you wrote for The Atlantic, about how Americans’ demand for constant entertainment is reshaping culture, politics, and everyday life. Why did you decide to pursue the idea as a book-length project?
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“Entertainment” has a double meaning. In one way, it’s something people consume: the stuff we turn to for escapism and togetherness and fun. In another way, though, it’s permission. We entertain arguments. We entertain ideas. The interplay between the two that captures a lot, I think, about the broader challenges Americans are facing right now, as the web has created so many new ways to be both passive consumers of the world and active participants in it. To me, that tension is important enough to explore at book length because, along the way, it captures so many others—among them the ever-blurrier lines between reality and fantasy, fandom and political identity, the people we dismiss as characters and those we see as fully human, complicated and worthy and real. We experience each other, ever more, through our screens. The book will explore the consequences.
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You have used the phrase “banal theatricality” in your work, can you explain the concept? How do you think it plays into our current political moment?
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The idea that social interaction is a performance is a very old one. But the current moment, I think, is changing “all the world’s a stage” from a metaphor into a mandate. There’s no business but show business, with the rules of the show stretching into everyday life. People now have “personal brands”; they “soft-launch” new relationships on social media; they buy t-shirts proclaiming their “main character energy.” Some—many—treat life itself as an endless performance. And the theatricality expands into politics in ways that have themselves become banal. We no longer accept that our actors and artists will be politicians by other means; we demand it. We expect professional politicians to manage their profiles as celebrities do, offering themselves to the public through both iconography and carefully calibrated authenticity. The policy decisions that actually affect people’s lives,
meanwhile? Those, too often, are relegated to the backstage.
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Who do you see as the audience for your book? What impact do you want it to have on the individual, on policy?
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The transformations the web has brought affect every American, each in their own way; because of that, I think the potential audience for the book could be as broad as “anyone who believes that reality is worth fighting for.” And I hope what they encounter in the book’s pages can bring some clarity to a cultural moment that can feel, sometimes, dizzyingly chaotic. Words are the atomic units of democracy: We can’t create good policy without first defining, in precise and sometimes painful detail, the problems we’re trying to solve. We can’t move forward, meaningfully, without being able to articulate where we’ve been. “We humanize what is going on in the world and in ourselves only by speaking of it,” the great scholar Hannah Arendt wrote. With the book, I want to offer some language that can help people talk to, and more importantly with, one other—words that might bring just a bit more
humanity to the story we’re writing together.
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The Class of 2025 on what made them decide to apply for a New America Fellowship.
So many writers I admire have been past fellows, and I'd heard amazing things about the program. Producing a book can be a lonely process, and sharing part of it with a group of colleagues doing similarly challenging work struck me as a wonderful opportunity.
— Matthew Campbell
I recently set out to direct my first feature-length documentary, and have been craving space and fellowship in which I can dive deeper into the larger thoughts and ideas my project has been leading me to; the kind of research and discourse focused environment I experienced in my former career as a journalist. New America has pulled together some incredible minds over the years, and I'm excited to be entering into community with them. — Jason Fitzroy Jeffers
Besides being in awe of the projects that have come out of this fellowship year by year, what most appealed to me was being part of a community I could learn from.
— Nadim Roberts
I can proudly say that I had applied for New America several times before, perhaps in the hopes that gives another potential fellow the push they need to persist! So many of the journalists, authors, thinkers and leaders that I admire have been New America fellows, and I was hungry for this community as I work on completing my first book (and podcast) project. — Molly O'Toole
I'm looking for the support and community of other creatives and researchers working on long-form projects. As a beat reporter, I have a network of people to toss around ideas with and learn from when it comes to daily journalism—but to make this book project the best it can be, I knew I needed to find a smart and supportive creative community immersed in longer projects.
— Keri Blankinger
Writing a nonfiction book that involves rigorous research and reporting can be an isolating, financially burdensome experience—that's certainly been the case for me with my previous books. I was drawn to the New America Fellowship not only because of my reverence for the work of past cohorts, but also because of the community and material support it offers authors like myself. — Mayukh Sen
I applied for a New America Fellowship after seeing that so many authors and filmmakers I admire were former fellows. — Will Hunt
A theme throughout my film is the tension between Indigenous culture’s deep value for community and colonizers’ insistence on individualism. This tension echoes my experience in the film industry. As a New America Fellow, I would benefit tremendously from a communal, supportive environment that goes beyond my individual process. I draw a great deal of inspiration for this film from a wide variety of artistic media and while I have had the honor and pleasure of being selected to many filmmaker focused fellowships, this opportunity would expand my perspectives and increase my storytelling capacity through other media. — Paige Bethmann
New America's values and priorities are aligned with many of my aspirations for my book project. — Aimee Meredith Cox
I'm process oriented where it comes to storytelling—there are infinite, fractal ways to tell any narrative. Seeing all the different ways past New America Fellows have used the gears of storytelling to offer agency, perspective, and immersivity has been incredibly insightful. I'm excited to become a part of this community, to learn from the best practices of others, and continue to push the boundaries of how documentary storytelling can be reflective. — Sam Butin
New America supports the very best writers, filmmakers, and storytellers. I always hoped that, when I was writing a book of my own someday, I might have a chance to be part of that community. — Alex W. Palmer
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A mesmerizing account of the 1978 Camp David peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt. —Sheelah Kolhatkar, Class of 2025
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A fascinating reconstruction of a forgotten historical interlude that completely changed my understanding of the causes of the Iraq War.
—Seth Harp,
Class of 2025
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A haunting, deeply affecting story about the promise of youth cut short by intimate partner violence and femicide.
—Cecilia Ballí,
Class of 2025
Learn More
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Jonathan Blitzer's book, Everyone Who is Gone is Here, was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction and for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize. The book was also featured on
President Barack Obama's Summer Reading List.
Ross Perlin's book, Language City, was shortlisted for the British Academy Book Prize.
Caitlin Dickerson wrote the cover story for the September issue of The Atlantic about migrants crossing the Darien Gap.
Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie were interviewed about their film, Sugarcane, on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday and appeared on WAMU's 1A to discuss the film.
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The top New America event we recommend you check out. Now.
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SEP 25TH
The Highest Law in the Land
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Join the Fellows Program for a conversation with Jessica Pishko, Class of 2023, about her new book. Learn more
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