Constance Collier-Mercado
Recipient Information
Location
Atlanta, Georgia
Medium
Literary Arts
Year of Award
2027
Grant or Fellowship
Southern Artist Spotlight Grant
Grant Amount
$0
Constance Collier-Mercado is an experimental writer, artist, and womanist culture worker committed to Black language and collective memory. She lives and works in Southwest Atlanta where she writes fiction, poetry, and short plays, as well as working in visual art and film.
Constance's practice seeks to reconcile the contradictions that come with family roots spread across multiple U.S. states. Born in Chicago and raised in the Bronx, her political home resides in the space between family connections tied to Atlanta, GA; Bolivar County, MS; and Beaufort County/Gastonia, AfroCarolina¹. As a granddaughter of Southern migrants, she is concerned with reclamation through the food, the land, and a more vernacular/ancestral eco-memory².
Winner of the 2023 Toni Beauchamp Prize in Critical Art Writing and Finalist for the 2024 Inaugural Southern Prize in Literature, she has received Fellowships from South Arts, Baldwin for the Arts, MacDowell, The Stay at Nearview, The Periplus Collective, The Watering Hole, Kimbilio, The Hambidge Center, and Jack Jones Literary Arts.
Her writing has been published by Obsidian, Hub City Press, A Gathering Together, Gulf Coast Journal, the African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta (ADAMA) blog, Hennepin Review, Root Work Journal, The Believer, Kweli Journal, The Auburn Avenue, FIYAH Magazine, and via her substack, On Repetition and Revision.
Constance has collaborated with or received commissions from the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival, the Auburn Avenue Research Library, Alternate ROOTS, Fulton County Arts & Culture, the Mayor's Office of Cultural Affairs, the Schomburg Center, Creative Pinellas, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, among others. She is Founder of The CultSTATUS Arts Haven. ¹see: Michelle Lanier. ²see: Dr. Melanie L. Harris.
Artist Fee: $5,000 - $10,000
Contact
Email Constance Collier-Mercado
www.constancesherese.com
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