THE FELLOWSHIP

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

All the Farm’s a Stage is a 6 month storytelling fellowship for QTBIPOC farmworkers culminating in a virtual performance + virtual multimedia exhibit. The cohort’s community and political representatives are invited to this final performance. Each of the 10 accepted farmworkers create a project about their experiences working on farms, intersecting with issues of land access, worker safety and wellbeing, wages, and more.

Possible mediums include visual art, poetry, dance & movement, comedy, archival & interview projects, video & film, zines, land or ecological art, sound & music, and more. Inspired by grassroots storytelling and participatory art making such as Theatre of the Oppressed and Bread & Puppet, NOF hosts this fellowship as a space for farmworkers to feel empowered and share their embodied knowledge. Each cohort will be made up of queer + trans + BIPOC farmworkers from different regions, ages, farming backgrounds, and seasons of experience.

Learn more about our fellows and watch their final projects below. 

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2025 - 2026

Fellows

All the Farm’s a Stage: A Farmworker Storytelling Fellowship

Daniela Peña Kusnir
PUERTO RICO

Mar Mendoza Cárdenas KENTUCKY

Kai’Tondre Menafee
NEW YORK

Lucecita Cruz
WASHINGTON & MINNESOTA

isa peña
CALIFORNIA

Lorenze Cordova
ILLINOIS

Caitlan Nockideneh
NEW MEXICO

Sun Smith
SOUTH CAROLINA

Omolará Williams McCallister FLORIDA

joan hwang
NEW YORK

Xander Hucklebeary
VIRGINIA

DANIELA PEÑA KUSNIR

My name is Daniela, I am an agriculture technician specialized in sustainability with some local herb medicine experience. Originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico but have been living in the center mountain region of Utuado since 2018. I am passionate about food and political sovernty, ancestral knowledge, permaculture design and community building. Currently working at Cafe Gran Batey, a coffee farm in Utuado which is part of the land trust form IALA PR. Also, collaborating in Collective PAC in Lares primarily with organizing group studies and other events. Viva Puerto Rico libre! Viva Palestina libre!

LUCECITA CRUZ

Luz Cruz is a farmer, chef, writer, and organizer whose work bridges food, ecology, and collective care. Afro-Indigenous, queer, and trans, they lead Cuir Kitchen Brigade, a mutual aid and food sovereignty project rooted in dignity and ancestral knowledge. Their work appears in Bon Appétit, Eater, and the Slow Food Foundation.

CAITLAN NOCKIDENEH

Hi, my name is Caitlan Nockideneh and I am currently residing on unceded Tewa territory in O'ga P'ogeh, NM or so called Santa Fe, NM. I am a Diné farmer, researcher, artist, and community organizer working at the intersections of tribal food sovereignty, environmental justice, and storytelling. I currently work as a farm manager at Three Sisters Collective's Full Circle Farm and I have also worked alongside community farms in the Bay Area, where I focused on programming and initiatives surrounding Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge practices and land-based pedagogy.

JOAN HWANG

farmer, fermenter, devotee of mycelium

MAR MENDOZA CÁRDENAS

Mar Mendoza Cárdenas (they/them) is a migrant land worker with roots in the Andes and the Amazonian Rainforest. They are passionate about growing food for all who are hungry and creating spaces for joy and experimentation within gardens and farms. They are a visual artist and a printmaker.

ISA PEÑA

isa is a queer salvi beekeeper, urban farmer, writer and floral artist living on Coast Miwok land. isa created Apiflora Network as a way to provide access to training opportunities for beginning beekeepers through the creation of BIPOC Bee Club. isa stewards honey bees at Soul Flower Farm where they received their PDC in 2022 and at Freedom Community Clinic’s Ancestral Healing Farm where they teach classes on native bee and butterfly conservation. isa also facilitates in-prison garden programs, leads healing circles for systems-impacted youth and is pursuing certification as a horticultural therapist. isa dreams of honoring their lineage of landless campesinos by forming a land cooperative farm and pollinator sanctuary with their community of farming friends.

SUN SMITH

Sun Smith is a young and beginning landless farmer, a painter, and a budding Buddhist who aims to live a vibrant life in relationship with the natural world. They are the initiating member of Solar Community Farm, a collective of qtbipoc folks who are shifting the food and farming landscape on occupied Traditional Cherokee (Aniyunwiya/Tsalagi) Homelands. They currently grow on/steward residential plots around Greenville, SC and serve the Land in hopes of supporting Her liberation from the markets of greed and harm. When they are not working, they can be found painting portraits of their girlfriend and cat, reading a book, or practicing ancestral Korean recipes.

XANDER HUCKLEBEARY

I am a migrant farmer, activist, revolutionary and student. My journey began in my great grandmother's garden, on long antelope hunts with my grandpa and cleaning fish with my mom by the river. They taught me respect for the animals and the cost of their lives. They taught me the patience to grow food from seed. But the flip of a coin initiated my journey to freedom. That moment set me on a path of rediscovery—which became a deep commitment to food justice, ecological care, and collective healing. Deepening my relationship with the land helped me reconnect with my family’s history, navigate loss, grief, and responsibility, while reimagining how I engage with nature and community.

My past work has ranged from television to hands-on labor at different farms, experiences that shaped my creativity and adaptability. Taking me from Monacan land to unceded Dwuamish territories. I integrate practices like upcycling and waste reduction into daily life and business practices, striving to minimize harm and honor the resources I steward. Along the way, I’ve challenged myself and others to rethink our assumptions about food, culture, our connection to the earth, and our overall sense of belonging.

Today, I’m working toward building a cooperative business and land trust that supports migrant, indigenous and marginalized communities. My vision is a shared space for farming, cultural preservation, and collective healing, nourishing both people and the planet—where land and food serve as tools for justice, sustainability, and collective empowerment.

KAI’TONDRE MENAFEE

kai'tondre menafee (they/them/he/him) is a Black trans multidisciplinary artist, urban farmer, and daydreamer living on Lenape homeland (aka Brooklyn, NY), with roots in Myaamia (Dayton, OH) and Chickasaw (Memphis, TN) land. Their music and dance practice is grounded in queer relationship with land and spirituality; and as the grandchild of sharecroppers, his work is deeply inspired by Black southern folk history and oral tradition. kai’tondre has traveled to Namibia, South Africa, The Gambia, and Senegal to learn about farming practices, land-based Indigenous resistance, and decolonial liberation on a global scale. kai’tondre dreams of creating movement and songs that embody the feeling of freedom and connection to the Earth.

LORENZE CORDOVA

Lorenze (they/them) is a community organizer, urban farmer and creative residing in Chicago, IL. Born in Batangas Philippines, they migrated to Illinois with their family at the age of three. Currently, they are farming at Patchwork Farms as a trade-worker. Throughout their farming career, they have been advocating around food soverignty and the building of resilient systems that move towards degrowth. Currently they are organizing around migrant rights, an end to US military presence in the Philippines, and an end to the plundering of ancestral lands.

OMOLARÁ WILLIAMS MCCALLISTER

I live in Miami. I am a community based, independent artist, scholar, educator and organizer. I collaborate with people and plants to create immersive installations and community resources that instigate conversations around how communities cultivate cultures of collective power and care while navigating everyday violences of systemic oppression.

2024

Fellows + Project Exhibition

All the Farm’s a Stage: A Farmworker Storytelling Fellowship

Ceci Pineda
PUERTO RICO
See the work ↗

Julia Rocha
NEW YORK
See the work ↗

Miguel M. Morales
KANSAS
See the work ↗

Cheyenne Najee
VIRGINIA
See the work ↗

Jumia Callaway
CALIFORNIA
See the work ↗

Richella Acosta
SOUTH CAROLINA
See the work ↗

Cly Samson
WASHINGTON
See the work ↗

Kim Sheu
NEW YORK
See the work ↗

Vania Galicia
CONNECTICUT
See the work ↗

Josue D. Vasquez
CALIFORNIA
See the work ↗

Leila Rezvani
MASSACHUSETTS
See the work ↗

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CECI PINEDA

Ceci Pineda (they/them) is a brown queer musician, ecosystem caretaker and facilitator. Ceci sows seeds and songs for Tlalli (earth, land, and soil), our more-than-human relationships, community liberation and dreaming of new relationships-based climate justice worlds. They dream to continue growing medicine and ancestral crops among queer, trans* and BIPOC community.

THE WORK

CHEYENNE NAJEE

Cheyenne Najee (they/any) is a farmworker living and working in the southeast. They enjoy growing heritage crops and medicinal herbs making art around ancestral traditions and joy.

THE WORK

• CLY SAMSON

I’m Cly (she/they), and I’m currently living on Coast Salish land. My family is from Angono, Rizal, Philippines. I come from artists, fisherfolk and farmers. I’m a traveling farmer with the Rainier Beach Action Coalition (RBAC). I hop around and help out Black and Brown farmers in the area; so one day I’ll be helping a farmer build a hoop-house, and then the next day I’m at a different farm harvesting for the market. I’m a caregiver in many different ways and recently been passed down the title of family historian. I love to write, do film photography, and many other crafts with plants. That’s me, as of now. I’m constantly learning and constantly Changing!

THE WORK

• JOSUÉ D. VÁSQUEZ

Josué D. Vásquez is a Mén Diiste (Zapotec) community organizer & artist residing on Chumash Lands (Oxnard, CA). As an organizer and artist, they draw from their experiences in the diaspora of the indigenous migrant communities residing across the Central Coast.

THE WORK

• JULIA ROCHA

Julia Rocha is a non-binary chicanx artist, educator and budding land steward. Raised in Tongva territory known as North East LA and based in Lenape land, known as Brooklyn NY, Julia works as an urban farmer at Bushwick Grows Community Farm, practicing regenerative agriculture to grow culturally relevant food and medicine for community. Julia, who performs under the stage name "Chispa," makes music that is grounded in an ever-expanding exploration of their voice, a love of traditional and popular music from Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as their own experience as a queer urban farmer remembering relationships of reciprocity with the land.

THE WORK

• JUMIA CALLAWAY

juju (They/Them/Nil) is an educator, farmer, rootworker, and intuitive artist from the Deep South. Raised on a lineage of land work, they are passionate about developing projects that bridge Black-centered decolonization methods and Indigenous-led climate knowledge. juju embraces traditional arts, storytelling, and medicines as a way of understanding their heritage and sharing global solidarity struggles across the Diaspora.

THE WORK

• KIM SHEU

Kim is located in Brooklyn, NY, where she currently works for a food access and agriculture nonprofit. She serves as a member of her union bargaining committee.

THE WORK

• LEILA REZVANI

Leila is a queer/nonbinary Iranian-American farmer living on Pocomtuc and Nipmuc land in Chesterfield, Massachusetts. They co-manage Keshtyar Seed, a small-scale seed farm focusing on native plants and SWANA heritage crops, and have been a farmworker for about 10 years.

THE WORK

• MIGUEL M. MORALES

Miguel M. Morales grew up in Texas working as a migrant and seasonal farmworker. Selected as a finalist for the 2023-2026 Poet Laureate of Kansas, he is a two-time Lambda Literary Fellow and an alum of VONA/Voices and of the Macondo Writers Workshops.

Miguel’s work appears in the anthologies: Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands, Primera Página: Poetry from the Latino Heartland, Cuentos del Centro: Stories from the Latino Heartland, From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction, The (Other) F Word: A Celebration of the Fat & Fierce, in Duende Journal, Acentos Review, Green Mountains Review, Texas Poetry Review, Hawai’i Review, and World Literature Today, among others.

Miguel is the co-editor of Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando, Fat & Queer: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Bodies and Lives, and of the Farmworker Portfolio in the latest issue of The Common Journal.

Miguel has earned several awards including the Society of Professional Journalists’ First Amendment Award. Follow Miguel as @TrustMiguel on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

THE WORK

• RICHELLA ACOSTA

I am a Filipinx farmer and creative currently living in Charleston, South Carolina. I have been involved in urban agriculture & education projects for the past 5 years, and I have recently begun working on a production farm this past season. I am passionate about culturally significant food and medicine, as crops and recipes are essential tools that can strongly carry on traditions, culture, and identities in the diaspora. As a queer farmer in the South, I find my place in this work through food, my relationship with the crops, and my family’s history. One of my favorite parts about farming is being able to share the produce with my family and hearing their stories of how they would eat the same things in the Philippines! I really enjoy cooking and also work part-time as a chef for a non-profit (and tackling all day cooking projects to share with my loved ones!).

THE WORK

• VANIA GALICIA

Vania Galicia (she/her/they/them) is a 25 year old, brown, queer, UnDACAmented woman. She is an urban farmer, educator, youth facilitator and community organizer. Her family migrated to Willimantic when she was 3 years old, and she has resided there since. Throughout her life she has focused on advocating for immigrant’s rights and local food sovereignty. From 2020-23 Vania was the community farmer for Grow Windham, where she has had the opportunity to support local urban farming initiatives and mentor other local growers. Currently, she is the director of programs at Grow Windham.

THE WORK

Spanish

English

FINAL PERFORMANCE

English

Spanish