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Announcing the 2026 Black Writers Fellow

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Hand Papermaking, Inc. is pleased to announce Alexis McKenney as the recipient of its 2026 Black Writers Fellowship. McKenney was selected through a national call for proposals held in summer 2025. Through this fellowship, Alexis McKenney will research petition papermaking as both a spiritual and creative practice among Black Southern women, rooted in precolonial West African techniques.

Petition paper is used in prayer work and is often combined with natural dyes to deepen its symbolic meaning. McKenney will interview elders within this tradition to help preserve and highlight the ongoing relevance of material culture in Black Southern spiritual practices.

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The Fellow

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Alexis McKenney is an AfroCarolina writer, herbalist, and cultural worker based in Durham, NC. Through weaving together her writing, cultural arts, and land justice practices, Alexis explores and preserves embodied archives of African ancestral technologies in the South. Alexis’ research focus centers around Black culture, spirituality and resistance in Eastern NC which she has documented on her substack, AfroCarolina Correspondence, and through a community stories fellowship with the Crossroads Program at Princeton University. Alexis’ work has been published in SONKU, Village X zine, and Breathing the World Anew:A Collection of Re/Memberings; for Warrior Spirits and Healing Souls. She is also the founder of Kongo Cafe, a platform that offers coffee ceremony, herbal medicine, and community cultural work as a means to situate Black southern traditions within a global context of indigenous wisdom.

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About Black Writers Fellowship

Black Writers Fellowship was established by Hand Papermaking in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives, the Black Writers Fellowship is a tangible step toward addressing social inequities and amplifying diverse voices within the field of hand papermaking. The program reflects the organization’s ongoing commitment to representing the full breadth of work and perspectives within the craft. To learn more about the organization, visit www.handpapermaking.org. To learn more about Hand Papermaking’s Black Writers Fellowship program, visit https://www.handpapermaking.org/get-involved/fellowships.

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