FAIR in the Arts is thrilled to announce the winners of the 2026 Artist Grant!
The winners of our 2026 Artist Grant span a wide range of artistic practices, professional backgrounds, and life experiences. They are filmmakers, theater artists, visual artists, writers, and educators. They are ambassadors, thought leaders, and innovators who represent our mission to change culture by creating new, better culture. We are honored to support their work.
FAIR congratulates our 2026 Artist Grant winners:
Grand Prize – Alison Fairweather Murray, Celeste Teal Larkin, Mary Poindexter McLaughlin, Timothy Naylor, Nevline Nnaji, Johari Mayfield, and Kimberley Tait.
Runners Up – Steve Salerno, Mary McDonald-Lewis, Kevin Ray, and Bob Rahmanian
FAIR Artist Grant 2026 Winners
Alison Fairweather Murray
Filmmaker, Director
Born in Nova Scotia and raised in England, filmmaker Murray studied at the Royal College of Art and began her career directing music videos and working with the BBC before making acclaimed documentaries Train on the Brain (Channel 4/TVO) and Carny (Sundance Channel). Her dramatic feature Mouth to Mouth starred a young Elliot Page, and her latest film Ariel: Back to Buenos Aires streams on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and HBO Max. Murray is currently developing the dance dramedy series Cha Cha Cha! and the psychological drama series My Lie, based on the book by Meredith Maran.
Celeste Teal Larkin
Executive Director at St. George Opera
Project funded: Hansel and Gretel at St. George Opera
Celeste Teal Larkin is active in music, theater, teaching, and storytelling. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Music with an emphasis in Vocal Performance from Utah Tech University in 2016 and her Master of Music in classical voice and opera from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Music in 2018. Celeste studied under Dr. Ken Peterson, Terri Metcalf-Peterson, Dr. Tod Fizpatrick, and Angela Meade. Celeste participated in the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival in Waimea, HI for their 2017 and 2018 seasons. In 2019-2021 Celeste founded a limited concert series featuring classical and musical theatre concerts titled Southern Utah Concert Series. Concert titles included; Opera is Theatre Too, and Something Old Something New. Celeste is an active music director in her theatre community. Celeste has been a member of the Utah Storytelling Guild since 2024 and regularly tells stories at the Scottish Games in St. George, Utah. Since 2023, Celeste has been an active board member of St. George Opera and is the current Executive Director. She also maintains her own private teaching studio – Larkin Arts, and is an adjunct instructor at Utah Tech University. She also enjoys gardening, being outdoors, and cooking delicious meals for her family.
Opera credits include; Mother/Sandman/Dew Fairy (Hansel and Gretel – School Outreach), Countess (Le Nozze di Figaro), Hippolyta (A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Benjamin Britten), Polonius (world premier of the English translation of Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet), Mistress of the Novices (Suor Angelica), Tessa (The Gondoliers).
Musical theatre credits include: Lilli/Katherine (Kiss Me, Kate), Philis Dale (42nd Street), Celeste #2 (Sunday in the Park with George), Edith (Pirates of Penzance), Kathy (9 to 5), Antonia (Man of La Mancha).
Mary Poindexter McLaughlin
Playwright, Poet, Essayist
Mary Poindexter McLaughlin believes in the transformative power of story and the freedom to articulate it. An award-winning playwright (The Buddha’s Wife), published poet, and essayist, she holds degrees from Stanford University and SUNY Buffalo. Mary draws on a decade of acting in NYC to direct/produce plays in Florida and beyond through her production company, Art of Freedom Live, and teaches theatre arts – including her movement-based ImproviDance – to connect with our divine humanity and push back against the encroaching Machine. In a world of deep-faked reality, theatre is still a touchstone of The Real. Dramatists Guild, SAG/AFTRA. Plays on NPX.
Timothy Naylor
Filmmaker, Professor of Film at LIU
Born in Michigan, Tim studied film production at New York University’s Graduate Film Program. His Thesis Film, Generic Metal Titan, screened at The Los Angeles Film Festival, AFI FF, Cairo International FF, won Bronze at Houston Worldfest, Best Short at The American Film and Video FF and was awarded the Warner Brothers Production Grant. His short comedy, The Henchman of Notre Dame, not only featured the first African to play Quasimodo on film, but also won Best Dark Comedy at Houston Worldfest, Best Short at Houston Comedy Fest, Best Short at Centre FF and screened at Dances With Films. Most recently he co-wrote and directed the short Reunion, which after winning several awards, qualified for the Oscars in 2025.
As a cinematographer, Tim has shot award winning features and high profile short form content, with clients including Lexus, Lancôme, Cirque du Soleil, CBS, Amazon, AMEX, Netflix and DJI. Working with high-profile talent such as Meryl Streep, Lupita Nyong’o, John Turturro, Harvey Keitel, Olympia Dukakis and many more, his range of work covers everything from comedy, horror, romance to high drama. These days, he’s been focusing on his true passion, writing and directing, having made a run of award winning short films and documentaries in the past two years. Inspired by everyday life, he finds inspiration in nearly everything, constantly thinking, “wouldn’t that look great on film?”
Nevline Nnaji
Filmmaker, Dancer
Nevline Nnaji is an Author, award-winning Filmmaker, and Pole Dancer. Nevline regularly publishes on her literary platform, “N3VLYNNN” where she explores topics of gender, race, culture, and wellness through her creative and free-thinking lens.
Her forthcoming anthology, “She Holds The Line: Black Women Speak on Gender Ideology”, features a diverse range of poets and authors who hold dissenting narratives on the transgender movement in the United States.
Nevline’s work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, FAIR in the Arts, Journal of Free Black Thought, and Gender: A Wider Lens.
Johari Mayfield
Teaching Artist, Choreographer
Johari Mayfield (M. Octavia Faulkner) is a New York–based choreographer, educator, and interdisciplinary storyteller. She creates work at the intersection of movement, text, and cultural inquiry, exploring authorship, embodiment, and the politics of representation. As a lead teaching artist with national arts organizations, she blends dance, literacy, and STEAM practices to expand access for diverse learners. Her current project, WILDCARD, reimagines historical narratives through satire, movement, and speculative storytelling. Across performance, publishing, and public workshops, she builds creative ecosystems that invite complexity, agency, and artistic freedom.
Kimberley Tait
Author, Founder at Dogstar Press
Kimberley Tait is a novelist and the founder of Dogstar Press, the independent literary press uniquely devoted to beauty and sincerity in fiction, and the first publisher to establish itself as 100% human. Kimberley’s debut novel FAKE PLASTIC LOVE was published by Flatiron Books in 2017. As a new orthodoxy and commerciality took over the mainstream publishing system, she refused to alter her work, believing literature is not a tool, but the expression of the human soul. Kimberley is building Dogstar as a home for authors who pursue truth and beauty, never yielding to external pressures.
Runners Up
Steve Salerno
Journalist, Essayist, Professor
Steve Salerno is a multi-awarded journalist and essayist. He has written over 500 cover stories, features, interviews, essays, and works of satire on business, education, race, and social policy for Harper’s, The Wall Street Journal, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Skeptic, The Washington Post, Quillette, and others. He has written three books, one of which, Deadly Blessing, was adapted for television (as Bed of Lies) by Warner’s. Before retiring from academia this past May, he spent 28 years as a professor of journalism and narrative nonfiction, teaching at Indiana-Bloomington, Lehigh, and UNLV. He was recognized as Outstanding Faculty at UNLV in 2020.
Mary McDonald-Lewis
Voice Actor, Director, Writer
Mary McDonald-Lewis is an itinerant communicator. She’s worked as a teacher, public speaker, print and electronic journalist, and writer – from copywriter to freelance author to essayist and more. McDonald-Lewis is also a 40+-year union voice actor, known as Lady Jaye from GI Joe, as the voice of GM’s OnStar, as I.V.A.N. on Buzz Lightyear and countless more. She is an on-camera and stage actor, and theater director as well. For 20 years she’s worked as a dialect coach for film, television and theater. McDonald-Lewis has endured three extreme cancellations in her art. Now, as an exiled artist, instead of working in her fields she is speaking out for all creators, using her skills to (she hopes) inspire and encourage others to join her in this most important quest: to restore freedom to the arts.
Kevin Ray
Theater Artist, Producer, Artistic Director
Project funded: Theatrical adaptation of Hope Mirrlees’ fantasy novel Lud-in-the-Mist
Kevin Ray is a Brooklyn-based theater director creating design-forward adaptations of under-acknowledged literature through KEVIN RAY | WORKS. His productions include adaptations of ghost stories by Edith Wharton (Unearthly Visitants, 2021), science fiction by E.M. Forster (The Machine Stops, 2023), and the banned dystopian novel by Russian heretic Yevgeny Zamyatin (We, 2024). He is currently developing Noise/Quiet: A Cycle of Plays in Nine Movements and adapting Hope Mirrlees’s 1926 fantasy novel Lud-in-the-Mist. His essay “The Inflating Cost of Artistic Freedom” was recently published in White Rose Magazine. Kevin writes about directing and producing new work for the stage on his Substack Modern Drama.
Bob Rahmanian (Neurowaxx)
Visual Artist, Musician
Project funded: Unacceptable, a group exhibition
Bob Rahmanian is a self-taught visual artist. His works span many different mediums including physical/digital art, animation, and music. He holds a degree in Evolutionary Biology and is a licensed medical doctor. His works have won several awards in juried competitions and are shown in galleries and public spaces nationwide.
