Before we could make the Fellowships a reality, we had to design a process. We wanted to extend the reach of the Fellowships beyond the existing Otherwise community, and we knew we needed guidance.

We gave an inaugural fellowship to micha cárdenas, who is, in her own words, “an artist, theorist, student and educator who creates and studies trans of color movement in digital media, where movement includes migration, performance and mobility.” Micha frequently uses science fiction narrative in her creative work, most recently in her online game Redshift and Portalmetal, which explores a trans woman of color’s experiences of interplanetary migration. She also writes scholarship about science fiction media, such as her essay Shifting Futures: Digital Trans of Color Praxis on the work of Janelle Monae. The descriptions you read above were crafted with her collaboration.