The Daniel K. Inouye National Center for the Preservation of Democracy (Democracy Center) has awarded the fourth annual Irene Yamamoto Arts Writers Fellowship to Derrick Austin and Mari Carmen Barrios Giordano.
A rare funding opportunity for arts writers, the Yamamoto Fellowship encourages diverse cultural and political perspectives that enrich and broaden arts writing as a practice and profession. The 2026 fellowship recognizes two emerging writers of color who write critically about visual art. Each fellow will receive a $5,000 award to support their work over a six-month period.
Derrick Austin is a Black queer writer who has been publishing poetry for 15 years and recently began writing prose about visual art, including pieces in AICA-USA Magazine and Brink. His new poetry collection is “This Elegance” (Boa Editions, 2026).
His honors include the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, A. Poulin Jr, Poetry Prize, 2026 AICA-USA Art Critics Fellowship, Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Fellowship, a Stegner Fellowship, and the Ron Wallace Poetry Fellowship at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. He lives in Chicago.
Mari Carmen Barrios Giordano writes in English and Spanish about visual and performing arts in Mexico, the U.S., and the Caribbean. She covers artists and artistic projects addressing hybridity, conflict, and the production of knowledge on the American continent, with a special interest in the representation of physical violence and threat.
She received an MA in art history from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and a BA in history and international relations from Stanford University. Her academic publications have appeared in The Oral History Review and History of Photography, and are forthcoming in Photographica.
The fellowship is made possible through a gift from Sharon Mizota to honor Irene Yamamoto (1937-2020), a lifelong lover of the arts. Born in Los Angeles, she was incarcerated with her family during World War II in Gila River, Ariz. Upon returning to Los Angeles, she attended UCLA and had a long career as a production artist for several design and advertising agencies. In her free time, Yamamoto loved to draw, learn new languages, visit museums, and travel.
The fellowship is also supported by Critical Minded, an initiative to invest in cultural critics of color co-founded by The Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Ford Foundation. More information on the fellowship is available at janm.org/democracy/arts-writer-fellowship.