Each year, our Art Wire Fellows (3-5 adults & 3-5 teens) are invited to experience a variety of performances in OZ Arts Nashville’s season and respond to each show in writing that is deeply engaged, personal, playful, questioning, and curious.

Composition of Original Literary Works

Informed by and in response to the presentations, Art Wire Fellows generate original writing that draws upon performance elements ranging from image to subject matter to thematic content. Selected writings are published online, and the season culminates in a community-based public reading. Want to see what the Art Wire fellows are writing? Check out the Art Wire website to see new pieces as well as an archive of original work from previous years. It’s an eclectic mix of literary voices and genres, including poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, hybrid forms, spoken word, and more.

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our 2025-2026 fellows

Koley Berry is a Hume Fogg High School senior who has been immersed in the arts for as long as she can remember. She plays violin and guitar, sings, writes, and loves reading. Her inspiration comes from listening to music on long walks and in conversation. Creating has always been a frequent activity of hers, whether through song, prose, or composition.

Larkin Boyd is a sophomore at Harpeth Hall and a very curious person. She is the current caretaker of many (struggling) plants and is a co-founder of her school’s Creative Writing Club. In her spare time she likes to take walks, make tea, and create various crafts that most likely will never be finished. When not at home procrastinating homework by reading, writing, or drawing, she enjoys learning new instruments, playing video games, and making up new worlds.

Thalia Dills is a high school senior at Hume-Fogg and a lover of all things artistic. She herself is an artist in more ways than one — she enjoys making visual art, composing songs on her guitar, and almost every type of creative writing. She finds that often her inspiration comes from seeing other artists at work, and therefore she is always searching for more to perceive and create.

Kelly Ann Graff is an educator, writer, and interdisciplinary artist living and working in Nashville, TN. They view their work as community and ecological archive, documenting the values, practices, and environment of queer and trans artists in the south. Their fiber art has been included in group shows at Frist Art Museum, Elephant Gallery, COOP Gallery, ClearStory Arts, and Gallery X among others. Their writing has been featured in the Southern Festival of Books, Wussy, Bible Belt Queers, Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, BookPage, and various zines.

Jarred Johnson, AKA JJ, grew up in the karst landscape of south-central Kentucky. He got his MFA in fiction from UNC Wilmington. He writes about rural people and forgotten places. His writing has been in the Oxford American and Bat City Review. He recently moved to Nashville where he’s working on a novel about the metaverse and the end of coal mining.

Lane Scott Jones is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer and speaker whose work has appeared in Longreads, Repeller, Good Grit, Nashville Scene, and in translation in Internazionale. Her writing has been awarded a 2025 ASJA Prize for First-Person Essay, selected as runner-up for the W.W. Norton Writers Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and supported by the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She writes the Substack newsletter Second Rodeo. Learn more at lanescottjones.com.

DeAngelo McBride is a fifteen-year-old writer and musician from Muskegon, Michigan, who moved to Nashville and is currently attending the Nashville School of the Arts. His creative work spans immersive game design and emotionally resonant storytelling, earning him a quarterfinalists spot at the Nashville Film Festival for his screenplay Ballad of a Poor Man.

Hannah Rodriguez is a junior at Martin Luther King Jr. High School. She has a passion for the arts and creativity through writing, playing guitar, and drawing. When she is not in school, she enjoys spending time outside by participating in activities such as camping, backpacking, and hiking. She does indoor rock climbing almost every day and plays flag football in the spring. She likes to spend time with her family through card games and movies.

Rudrapriya Shanker is an Indian immigrant writer, somatic therapist and Tantrik priestess devoted to cyclical living, insurgent care and motherhood as a spiritual practice. Her poetry bridges ancient nondual wisdom with intimate personal truth, revealing the body as a site of expression-awakening. Rooted in her ancestral lineage of liberation, Rudrapriya’s words are embodied spells that restore the relationship between the daily and the divine, the self and the collective.

Elizabeth Upshur is an actress and storyteller raised in Tennessee. She is a contributing editor at The Seventh Wave and local Black-owned company Blazon Publishing. She is a Fulbright alumna, Rock’n’Roll marathoner, forever Miss Tennessee Earth 2018, and bachatera. She is the founder of The Matinee Club, a virtual workshop for film buffs, screenwriters, and film writers. In her free time, she sketches and volunteers at the Nashville based food pantry The Store.

Art Wire

A creative partnership between The Porch and OZ Arts Nashville.

Composition of Original Literary Works

our 2025-2026 fellows

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Art Wire

A creative partnership between The Porch and OZ Arts Nashville.

Composition of Original Literary Works

our 2025-2026 fellows

We’re saving you a seat.

stay connected

WRITE

Attend

Read

SUPPORT