Boston Art Review and Praise Shadows Art Gallery are pleased to announce our 2025 Emerging Boston Art Writing Fellows: Alyssa Gaines, Nathan Hilyard, and Zaryah Qareeb! These three fellows were selected from a competitive pool of 18- to 21-year-old applicants from across Greater Boston and represent our third cohort of fellows since 2022.
During this paid, five-month program, fellows will be guided through a curriculum designed to introduce them to different forms of art writing, hone their voices, and learn the inner workings of a contemporary art gallery. They will participate in hands-on workshops and field trips with writers, editors, curators, nonprofit leaders, and media professionals, including but not limited to Nakia Hill (City of Boston), Julian Sorapuru (Boston Globe), Laurel V. McLaughlin (Tufts University Art Galleries), Molly Kleiman and Rachel Ossip (Triple Canopy), Devin Gordon (freelance), and Max Gruber (ICA / Boston). The fellows will have opportunities to work at Praise Shadows Art Gallery and—by the end of the program—pitch a project that will be published on our platforms.
We can’t wait to share more about what these fellows get up to in the coming months. If you see them out and about, please say hello!
About the Fellows
Alyssa Gaines (she/her) is a poet-researcher from Indianapolis’s east side. She is a junior at Harvard where she studies honors social studies and the history of art and architecture, researching the relationship between civics, culture, and capital by focusing on governance and the conservative aesthetic. Additionally, she studies Black folk art and Sienese civic painting—having studied aesthetic philosophy across Milan and Siena. In her poetic practice she grounds her research passions in the personal and is deeply inspired by notions of origin, home, and the self. At Harvard she codirects the Black Arts Collective, serves on the JFK Jr. Forum Committee, the Undergraduate Architecture Society’s board, and The Harvard Advocate’s art board. She was the sixth National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, her poetry and art writing have been published across national and international channels, and she is delighted to be developing her art writing in her new home of Boston.
Nathan Hilyard (he/him) is a writer and reader from Rhode Island. He is currently studying writing, literature, and publishing at Emerson College with a minor in art history. When not in the library, Nathan covers local shows for Milk Crate, a music zine where he is coeditor in chief, and makes magic with his beloved comedy troupe, Jimmy’s Traveling All-Stars. He firmly believes that more people should read fiction. In his free time, Nathan likes to swim and play clarinet.
Zaryah Qareeb (she/her) is a Boston-raised filmmaker, writer and student at Emerson College, studying media arts and philosophy. Her writing interests are contemporary art within the black diaspora, time-based media and decolonial theory. Her work seeks to explore the connection between political economy and visual cultures, specifically socially engaged, anti-imperialist, and pedagogical practices within artmaking. She has gained experiences at various fine art institutions and museums, including RISD Museum, Boston Center for the Arts, and the Griffin Museum of Photography as a Curatorial Intern. In her free time she enjoys making chai lattes and watching foreign films.
Support This Work
If you’re interested in learning more about how to get involved with or support our writing fellows, please contact us.
Boston Art Review is supported through the BAR Giving Circle along with art_works, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston Cultural Council, Girlfriend Fund, and the Wagner Foundation.
If you’re interested in helping us sustain this program, please consider making a tax-deductible gift to support the next generation of arts writers Boston and beyond.
