Current Class of New America Fellows
For more than 25 years, New America’s Fellows Program has supported the dynamic storytelling and creative efforts of journalists, educators, filmmakers, and researchers—all working to shape the conversation on the critical issues of today. The Fellows Program has supported over 300 Fellows who have gone on to publish more than 150 books, produce 16 feature-length films, develop two podcast series, and write several award-winning long-form reporting projects. Visit the Fellows Archive to see the full body of work produced by our Fellows.
The program receives hundreds of competitive applicants every year, and this year, we chose 10 talented individuals for our Class of 2026 New America Fellows. Read our report on the Class of 2026 Fellows Program applicants here.
Class of 2026 New America Fellows
Jake Bittle, New America Fellow
Jake Bittle is a staff writer at the nonprofit news outlet Grist and the author of The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration. Bittle is currently working on a book about the turbulent transformation of Bakersfield, California, from fossils to sustainability.
Marcella Bombardieri, New America Fellow
Marcella Bombardieri is a Polk Award–winning journalist and higher education policy researcher. She is writing a book that chronicles the lives of community college students and leaders in one Texas city, illustrating why community colleges are an essential tool to fight poverty and shore up democracy.
Mark Chiusano, New America Fellow
Mark Chiusano is a journalist and the author of The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos. Chiusano spent the last year working app-based jobs, from delivery biking to rideshare driving to online rating, to report for his current book project about the underbelly of the gig economy.
Grace M. Cho, New America (ASU Future Security) Fellow
Grace M. Cho is a nonfiction writer, professor of sociology at the College of Staten Island, CUNY, and the author of Tastes Like War. Cho’s current book project is a hybrid work of creative nonfiction and interdisciplinary scholarship that examines the Korean War through the lens of her family’s experience of the war’s devastation and afterlife.
Anuj Chopra, New America (ASU Future Security) Fellow
Anuj Chopra is an award-winning journalist and a Washington, DC-based reporter for Agence France-Presse. He is working on a nonfiction book about Saudi Arabia, a profile of the kingdom in the age of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Gabriella García-Pardo, New America Fellow
Gabriella García-Pardo is a Colombian-American filmmaker whose work explores the relationship between land, identity, and belonging across the United States and Latin America. García-Pardo is currently directing FENCED, a darkly humorous documentary that uses fences as a lens to examine private property, American identity, and the human desire to control the world around us.
Marielena Hincapié, New America Fellow
Marielena Hincapié is a nationally recognized immigrant justice leader, strategist, and democracy advocate. She is writing a narrative nonfiction book, Becoming America: A Personal History Of A Nation’s Immigration Wars, telling the sweeping history of America’s immigration through the story of a single family—her own.
Dan Xin Huang, New America Fellow
Dan Xin Huang is an independent writer and journalist whose work has been featured in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, New York magazine, and more. He is currently working on a book about the entwined braids of education and class in America, told through the story of one Appalachian school district.
Daniel Lombroso, New America Fellow
Daniel Lombroso is a director and journalist who spent the past nine years building the Oscar-nominated video departments at The New Yorker and The Atlantic. His upcoming feature film and book explore the booming penis enlargement industry as a raw, intimate lens on masculinity, body image, and male mental health.
Saket Soni, New America Fellow
Saket Soni is an award-winning labor organizer, the founder and director of Resilience Force,mand the author of The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America. Soni’s next book, Hurricane Hustlers, is a deeply reported look inside the soon-to-be trillion-dollar climate disaster recovery economy, through the lives of people entrenched in the hustle—including undocumented immigrant roofers, the CEOs of major restoration companies, and Federal Emergency Management Agency czars.