As part of our region-wide initiative Sixty Regional, Sixty Inches from Center is expanding our Critic-in-Residence and Midwest Arts Writers Fellowship Programs.

We at Sixty believe the curiosities that drive our region’s writers and artists can disrupt and challenge our perceptions of the Midwest and its arbitrary, colonial borders. Writers ask difficult questions and spark conversations that bring us to a deeper understanding of where we live—its patterns, connections, hauntings, cultural distinctions, and arts landscapes. Through Sixty Regional, we work with artists, writers, spaces, and organizations across the Midwest to co-create opportunities and satellite projects that dig further into these questions and ideas through the lens of place.

For our 2026 Midwest Arts Writers Fellowship, writers in Kansas City, MO and Milwaukee, WI will spend six months developing, refining, and publishing writings about the distinct culture of their cities, focusing on the Indigenous, trans, queer, diasporic, and/or disabled artists and arts workers in who live and create there. These writers were nominated by our partners B-REAL Academy, The Kansas City Defender, Cactus Club, and THE CR8TV HOUSE.

 

Sixty’s 2026 Critic-in-Residence Program coalesces our partners in Ohio, Michigan, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Missouri—ATNSC: Center for Healing and Creative Leadership, BULK Space, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, First Peoples Fund and the Oglala Lakota Artspace, and The Luminary—to co-create a constellation of residencies that support deep study and immersive research. This summer, each partner will host local and visiting critics who will each bring their own unique perspective to the city, their residency, and the writings they will publish with Sixty.

With the support and guidance of Maria Isabelle Carlos and Aricka Foreman, our project co-editors, our residents and fellows will use writing as a tool to reflect on the complexities of Midwest life and the artists who help define and articulate its culture, with their pieces to be released this fall.

Midwest Arts Writers Fellows

Cactus Club + THE CR8TV HOUSE (Milwaukee, WI)

Cactus Club is an artist-run, queer-owned, multi-disciplinary arts and performance space in Milwaukee, WI. Engaging with a culturally expansive and intergenerational cross-section of the city, the venue aims to foster meaningful relationships, highlight artistic voices, develop local talent, and provide high quality arts programming to folks near and far. The organizers work to provide a supportive and amorphous platform for creative experimentation, tastemaking curation and interactive educational opportunities. Over the course of nearly 30 years, the club has progressed from niche indie venue to a cultural hub and national destination – thanks in no small part to the deep community ties, inspired participation, and collective growth of all involved. Cactus Club is hosting writer Nayeli Portillo.

THE CR8TV HOUSE (pronounced Creative) was born after the death of TJ Swan and from a set of very specific instructions delivered through a dream. In that three month recurring dream, TJ Swan spoke clearly to his daughter: “Don’t sell the house.” At the intersection of grief, professional uncertainty, and the relentless hope, those words became a directive and more importantly an anchor. What followed was a return—to home, to memory, and to the radical belief that art is not only a form of expression, but a tool for survival, remembrance, and a strategy for collective liberation. Founded in 2023 by artist, educator, and cultural leader Symphony Swan Zawadi, THE CR8TV HOUSE is rooted in a nearly century-old home where she first learned how to be an artist, a critical thinker, and a community builder. THE CR8TV HOUSE is hosting writer and curator Mia Rimmer.

Nayeli Portillo is a queer Mexican-American music journalist, writer, and educator from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They like to bring the work created by queer and POC artists and musicians, especially those across the Midwest, into broader cultural conversations through their writing. Their work has been published in Remezcla, Pitchfork, them, and Austin Chronicle. They also have an essay featured in NEGROGOTHIC, an anthology of writing on the work of composer and countertenor M Lamar.

Mia Rimmer is a Milwaukee-based artist and curator digging in archives, crates, and occasionally the nose. Their multidisciplinary practice utilizes personal and heritage material histories to examine themes of remembrance and permanence. Their work features recent collaborations with WaterMarks, UWM Center for 21st Century Studies, and Black Girls in Archives. Mia currently serves as THE CR8TV HOUSE’s 2026 Curatorial Resident. Through analog collage and the pen, Mia’s creative ecosystem activates nostalgia as a speculative tool for imploding and reconstructing memories.

B-REAL Academy + The Kansas City Defender (Kansas City, MO)

In a city torn by inequality, ravaged by segregation, and enforced by racist carceral systems, we declare our time has come. We are the generation that resists, united by our unyielding belief in justice, Black life, and the indomitable spirit of liberation for all people. The Kansas City Defender is first and foremost, a Black-led, Abolitionist organization. When we refer to “abolition,” we mean a world free from imprisonment, policing, and warfare, replaced by essential, life-affirming resources like food, housing, healthcare, arts, and education. Abolition is our vision and our practical organizing strategy. Therefore, we are not just a news outlet, we are a radical, Black-led power-building organization. Our members are Black students, organizers, artists, educators, community members, elders, and more.

B-REAL Academy is a program for visionary Black high schoolers, adolescents, adults and beyond across Missouri and Kansas who are ready to learn skills no classroom is teaching or has taught: organizing/activism, direct action & civil rights, radical Black history, and movement building. Rooted in the legacy of the Black Radical Tradition, B-REAL Academy draws from a lineage of liberation schools—like the Freedmen’s Schools, established by the Freedmen’s Bureau after the Civil War to educate formerly enslaved people, and the Black Freedom Schools, created by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Mississippi organizers during Jim Crow to empower Black communities through political action. The curriculum is built on the lessons from other popular education movements, including The W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction in Philadelphia and The Love We Don’t See in Los Angeles, weaving them into a uniquely fugitive pedagogy that arms students with knowledge and resistance. B-REAL Academy is the freedom school of The Kansas City Defender.

The Kansas City Defender and B-REAL Academy will be hosting Casha Gloria Mills, and co-fellows Sheri “Purpose” Hall and John “Hypocrace” Lewis.

Casha Gloria Mills is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and performer based in Kansas City. Working across poetry, painting, and improvisational comedy, her practice explores healing, spirituality, community, and selfhood through layered storytelling and expressive visual work. Deeply informed by her work with young people, Mills uses art and performance as tools for reflection, connection, and collective care. She is the author of This May Hurt a Little and continues to expand her practice through community-centered programming, live performance, and visual storytelling.

Sheri “Purpose” Hall is an award-winning spoken word artist, interdisciplinary creator, and mental health advocate. She ranked number two Woman Poet in the World at the 2022 Women of the World Poetry Slam (virtual) and was named 2020 Female Spoken Word Artist of the Year. A Charlotte Street Generative Performing Artist Awardee and multi-year arts grant recipient, Sheri is widely published and the author of five books, including Black Girl Shattered. She serves as Executive Director of Arthropy and founder of East of Red ArtHouse.

John “Hypocrace” Lewis IV–a.k.a. “your favorite poet’s, favorite poet”–has been in the poetry community for 10+ years. He represented Kansas City along with his team “FTW” on a national poetry slam level in 2015, 2017, and 2018. He is the current slam master of “The Regulators,” ranked 5th in the Midwest region and 11th in the southern region. In 2024 he became the host of a series of events called I Am Hypocrace Presents, and the creator of Spoken Easy, a prohibition style open mic. He has grown to be a crowd favorite at the local open mic “Soul Sessions” once held on Mondays at the KC Juke House on the historic 18th and Vine, gaining him acknowledgement from 41 Action News and the Emmy-award winning TV station 38 The Spot.

Critics-in-Residence

ATNSC: Center for Healing & Creative Leadership (Cleveland, OH)

ATNSC: Center for Healing and Creative Leadership is an artist-led incubator: retreat, residency, research and exhibition space sited in a multi-unit residential home prioritizing socially engaged Indigenous artists and artists of color. ATNSC, as experimental space, stewards a sound and literary repository, woodshop, risograph, digital lab, gallery and pollinator garden. Engaged at the intersections of contemporary art, equity leadership, holistic healing and place, ATNSC values hospitality and mutual exchange. ATNSC explores the architecture of home as a site for inquiry for artists and cultural workers and is located in the historic Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio.

Residents will be hosted by ATNSC’s founder and director M. Carmen Lane, a contemporary artist, writer and facilitator. ATNSC will be hosting writers Bri Robinson and Shelli Reeves.

Bri Robinson is a midwestern propagandist and digital griot brought up in Warren, Ohio currently based in Chicago, Illinois. They are an analog collagist, curious about the relationship between Black folks, technology, regional sociology and the cosmological. Bri is the co-founder of WITH(IN).DIGITAL, a pioneering digital initiative dedicated to supporting Black artists and creatives. Through this initiative, Bri has seen successful collaborations such as E-Merge: Intersections of the Black Midwest through SPACES’ Satellite Fund and Into the Respite with the Studio Museum in Harlem. Bri holds a Bachelor of Arts from Kent State University in Sociology and Art History, along with a Master’s of Modern and Contemporary Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Shelli Reeves is a writer and social practice artist whose work explores storytelling, memory, belonging, and collective imagination. Through writing and participatory practice, she creates spaces for reflection, dialogue, and connection grounded in lived experience and cultural inquiry.

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, NE)

Located in Omaha, Nebraska, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art facilitates the creation, presentation, and understanding of contemporary art through an international residency program, exhibitions, and educational programs. Their vision is to inspire an open and diverse dialogue on the critical issues that give shape and meaning to the human condition. Bemis Center will be hosting residents Julia Arredondo and Amber Eve Anderson.

Julia Arredondo is a visual artist, occasional art critic, video journalist, and counter cultural communications enthusiast who is originally from South Texas. Julia specializes in trend observations around zine culture, vernacular design, DIY media, artist-run businesses, and marginalized music histories. Julia lives in Portland, Maine, and works as an arts administrator/grant writer when she’s not busy reading, walking, laughing, making art, and listening to Princess Loko. Julia would like to be dancing more. Follow them on instagram @future_juju.

Amber Eve Anderson is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and organizer based in Omaha, NE. She is interested in the ways identity and behavior are informed by one’s surroundings, both physical and virtual. She received a BFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, where she served on the advisory board of the Institute of Contemporary Art and was a regularly contributing writer at BmoreArt. She is now one of the organizing artists at Project Project in Omaha. Her self-published book Free to a Good Home was purchased by the New York Public Library and is available at Printed Matter. You can find more of her work at ambereveanderson.com.

BULK Space (Detroit, MI)

Founded in 2017 by artists Meg Kelley, Jova Lynne, Clare Gatto, and Jessica Allie, BULK Space began as a shared studio and quickly grew into a community-centered arts organization in Detroit. Committed to experimental and interdisciplinary practice, it now presents exhibitions, public programs, residencies, publications, and a Media Lab that supports creative production and skill-sharing. Rooted in inclusivity, accessibility, and care, BULK Space was created as an alternative to traditional institutions, centering artists as cultural workers and collaborators. The organization prioritizes community-driven programming and fosters safer spaces for dialogue, making, and reflection. With its Media Lab in Detroit’s North End, BULK Space expands access to tools for digital media, sound, and emerging technologies while championing artists whose work advances cultural transformation, resistance, and collective healing. BULK Space will be hosting writers Aaliyah Christina and Danielle Fancisca.

Born in Ruston, Louisiana and raised across Louisiana, Maryland, and Texas, Aaliyah Christina creates and supports performance work as an administrative manager, curator, movement artist, and writer. She makes dances and writes responses to performance, sociological power dynamics, mental health, and Blackness as a resident on the South Side of Chicago. She has worked and collaborated with community organizations on the South Side like Assata’s Daughters, Southside Together, and Music Moves to ensure the archiving, wellness, and power building of herself and her neighbors. Since 2015, she has worked with other artists like Keyierra Collins, Ysayë Alma, Empress Darling “Shear” Squire, Wisdom Baty, Ayako Kato, and J’Sun Howard to name a few. She specializes in Africanist improvisation with degrees, honors, and vocations granted from institutions known as The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, Chicago Dancemakers Forum, Links Hall, 3Arts, Illinois Arts Council, Sista Afya, and many more. Her writing is featured on Sixty Inches from Center, Injustice Watch, and Performance Response Journal. She created PRAISE MOTHER SQUAD to highlight the multifaceted possibilities of Black majorette dance (aka j-sette) and platform stories about mental health, reproductive rights, and intersecting family dynamics.

Danielle Francisca is a writer and critical thinker on arts, culture, and the political economy. Her work evaluates cultural production against the backdrop of working-class issues and an ever-evolving socio-economic formation. She founded and co-runs Nox Library, an art-centered political education project based in Detroit. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History with Honors from Wayne State University.

First Peoples Fund (Kyle + Rapid City, SD)

Oglala Lakota Artspace (OLA) is an arts facility on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Kyle, South Dakota. Operated by First Peoples Fund, OLA provides culturally-based workshops in a wide range of art forms, all developed with community input. The Artist-in-Residence program operates May-November each year. The facility includes several artist studios, a state-of-the-art recording studio, a performance space, offices for local non-profits/businesses, co-working spaces, and a classroom. First Peoples Fund will host writer and educator Dr. Jessica R. Metcalfe (Turtle Mountain Chippewa).

The Luminary (St. Louis, MO)

The Luminary is an expansive platform for art, thought and action. Since its inception The Luminary has been a home for exceptional art that engages the pressing issues of the present. Through an active roster of exhibitions, residencies, performances, publications and gatherings, we act as a point of convergence for diverse publics. We cultivate thoughtful platforms for exchange, support forward-moving art and ideas, and attempt to model a more equitable and interconnected art world as an institution of our time. The Luminary will be hosting writers and artists Xiao Faria daCunha and Camryn Daniels.

Xiao Faria daCunha is a practicing visual artist and an independent journalist covering what’s happening in the Midwest belt, focusing on lifestyle, art, and culture. Her visual art practice includes mixed-media illustration on paper, printmaking, and mixed-media collage. Xiao was the former Managing Editor for Urban Matter Chicago and her bylines have appeared in Chicago Reader, BlockClub, BRIDGE.CHICAGO, KCUR, The Pitch KC, and more. Xiao’s artistic and writing practice explores the intimate, vulnerable truth of the BIPOC, migrant, immigrant, and diaspora communities. She considers everything she does art journalism and aims to speak on behalf of those who haven’t been heard and shed light on what hasn’t been seen, whether it’s emotional, cultural, or societal. By weaving her personal experience with public narratives, Xiao creates emotional and engaging conversations to interrogate, challenge, and advance existing perceptions of women, Asian diasporas, and other immigration populations.

Camryn Daniels is a zine author, essayist, graphic designer, and fiber artist. A former museum professional, current community organizer, she works to imagine a world outside the limitations of government institutions. She is inspired by the deep desire to know herself in the context of those who came before her. Her praxis is bolstered by Black communist and womanist authors, so the events she organizes and her written work have a constant undercurrent of anti-capitalism. She is a collaborator with the Fiber Arts Circle, mostly creating publication and marketing materials.

Meet The Co-Editors

Maria Isabelle Carlos is a writer and editor from the ancestral, traditional, and unceded lands of the Osage and Kickapoo Nations in what is currently known as Missouri. They have worked for independent presses and literary/arts magazines, including Haymarket Books, Bull City Press, Nashville Review, and Zone 3. Now based in so-called Chicago, they work as a freelance manuscript editor and bartender.

Aricka Foreman is a poet, essayist and interdisciplinary artist from Detroit. She is the author of Dream with a Glass Chamber and Salt Body Shimmer which won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry. Foreman has earned writing fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and Millay Arts. Her poetry and essays have been featured in Harper’s Bazaar, Catapult, the Black Warrior Review, Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, the Academy of American Poets, among several other publications.

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This project is generously supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.