Liza St. James, writing associate and School of Art Writing Fellow in the Center for Writing and Learning, has been named a 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow. She is one of 15 recipients for fiction of the nearly 40-year-old fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) with support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). Fiction fellows are recognized for their work championing stories of the underrepresented, challenging cultural narratives underpinning American history, ideology, and identity and exploring complex generational storylines. 

St. James is a writer, translator, and editor, whose work has appeared in various publications internationally such as BOMB, The Believer, and The Paris Review. Her writing has been supported by residencies and fellowships from the University of the Arts Helsinki, the School for Poetic Computation, the Spruceton Inn, Gullkistan, and more. St. James, who has also taught writing at Columbia University, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Queensboro Correctional Facility, and San Quentin State Prison, earned her B.A. in comparative literature and literary theory from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.F.A. in fiction and literary translation from Columbia University. 

This year fellows were also named in four additional disciplines, Folk/Traditional Arts, Interdisciplinary Work, Painting, and Video/Film. The NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship Program makes unrestricted cash grants of $8,000 to artists working in 15 disciplines, recognizing five disciplines per year on a triennial basis. Since it was launched in 1985, the program has awarded over $35 million to 5,512 artists.