Lovia Gyarkye is an editor at Hammer & Hope, a journal of Black politics and culture; before that she was a critic for The Hollywood Reporter and The New York Times. For her report on the precarious state of the National Endowment for the Arts, she got to “dust off my reporting skills” and talk to “people who are navigating this challenging political era,” who want to “support the arts but also stand up against the government’s dehumanizing policies. In some ways, reporting out this story felt like confronting the biggest challenge the United States is facing right now: Do we hold on to the idea of who we were, or do we face the reality of what we’ve become and act accordingly?”

Minneapolis-based journalist and arts critic Sheila Regan has written for the Washington Post, Minnesota Star Tribune, The Guardian, and more over the years. As she covered Theater Mu’s world premiere production of HMong Futures by Katie Ka Vang, she found herself inspired by the playwright’s deeply embedded, community-centered work, adding that she was intrigued to learn the ways in which Theater Mu sought to honor the different dialects within the HMong language. Said Regan, “I hope people understand just how traumatic it has been for communities targeted by aggressive immigration tactics under the current federal administration.”