Rasheena Fountain centers environmental advocacy and justice in her work. She has received fellowships and support from the Jack Straw Writers Program, National Audubon, and Sundress Academy for the Arts. Her film, Dropped Down Blues, debuted in the “How We Carry Water” 2024 exhibit at PRAx. In 2025, she released In the Aftermath, a blues guitar and poetry performance set. Fountain has a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an M.A.Ed. from Antioch University Seattle/IslandWood, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington, where she studies blues and environment as a PhD candidate in English.
2026 Writers Program
Artist Support Program 2024: Dropped Down Blues, a speculative blues poetry audio-visual project and companion album
This year’s Writers Program Curator, Claudia Castro Luna, has selected the 2026 Jack Straw Writers: Natalie Pascale Boisseau, Kevin Dean, Elissa Favero, Jean Ferruzola, Rasheena Fountain, Gabriella Garcia, Maiah A Merino, BeeLyn Naihiwet, Diane Nguyen, Alejandro Pérez-Cortés, Sayantani Roy, and Ruth Marie Tomlinson. Our writing fellows will be hard at work for the next few […]
Categories: Writers Program
Daniel Atkinson: The Vanguard Generation: African American Artists, 1880-1918
Using newly discovered documents from the era, this talk reveals the talent, ingenuity, conflicts, and solidarity of the “Vanguard Generation.”
Friday, March 13, 7:00pm
7pm in person, on Facebook, or YouTube. Free.
Jack Straw Cultural Center
Claudia Castro Luna: Green Expectations, A Poetry Workshop
An event that's part poetry reading, part discussion, part writing workshop.
Thursday, April 9, 7:00pm
7pm in person, on Facebook, or YouTube. Free.
Jack Straw Cultural Center
An anthology and reading from Jack Straw Cultural Center and Raven Chronicles celebrating the first twenty years of the Jack Straw Writers Program, 1997-2016
