The September Transition

Today, we welcome 10 Class of 2026 New America Fellows to New America. This class of Fellows includes writers and filmmakers dedicated to enhancing conversations around the most pressing issues of our time.

This month serves as both an inflection and reflection point as we look forward to supporting the professional journey of this new cohort while also pausing to reflect on the impact made by last year’s class.

Since last September, the Class of 2025 has had a remarkable year. They published and produced work that will shape our understanding of a range of issues, including politics, migration, prison reform, and more.

We have compiled a list of highlights from their fellowship year. We hope you enjoy catching up on the work from the Class of 2025!

Highlights from the Class of 2025:

• Paige Bethmann’s ​​Fellows project, the film Remaining Native, premiered at SXSW in March, where it won the Special Jury Award and the Audience Award. The film follows Ku Stevens, a 17-year-old Native American runner who takes inspiration from his ancestors.
• Keri Blakinger wrote a story for the Houston Chronicle about the state’s new shift away from intense isolation in solitary confinement. She also produced a short documentary about a death row Dungeons & Dragons player and his quest for forgiveness in the final days before his execution. The film was a 2025 Oscar nominee.
• Cecilia Ballí worked on her book, Mariachi Dreams, about life and culture on the Texas border among the nation’s top three-ranked high school mariachi bands.
• Sam Butin worked on a video game, Normandie: A Documentary Video Game, which follows his ancestor’s immigration story as Jewish refugees aboard the final voyage of the SS Normandie in 1939. Butin also completed a residency aboard the Marius (a French cargo ship) with Villa Albertine, during which he traveled to the same ports as the SS Normandie. There will be an exhibition at the Musee du Marine in Paris in 2026 showcasing the trip and Butin’s video game.
• Matthew Campbell worked on his book, The Man Who Stole the Gods, which will tell the story of how thousands of priceless artifacts were looted during the Cambodian Civil War and laundered onto the international art market—ending up, among other places, at New York’s Metropolitan Museum.
• Aimee Meredith Cox organized the Society for Cultural Anthropology’s biennial conference, “Restorative Relations,” and worked on her book that explores the interlocking societal and cultural forces that contribute to the various degrees of violence that often circumscribe, but do not wholly define, the lives of Black women in the United States.
• Megan Garber worked on her Fellows project, the book Screen People, which will be published in 2026. She also wrote a number of pieces for The Atlantic about the intersection of pop culture and politics.
• Seth Harp’s Fellows project, the book The Fort Bragg Cartel, about a string of unsolved murders at America’s premier special operations base was published in August.
• Will Hunt’s book, Bones, a narrative nonfiction for Random House, will explore the power of the ancestral dead—their bodies, bones, and burial grounds—to shape contemporary culture and politics.
• Jason Fitzroy Jeffers worked on his first feature-length documentary, The First Plantation, about the intensifying fight for reparations in Barbados, once home to the world’s first slavery-based economy, and the impact of this little-known history on the wider Americas.
• Sheelah Kolhatkar worked on her book about how activist investing is reshaping American politics and the economy. She was also named a 2025 Andrew Carnegie Fellow.
• Molly O’Toole worked on her Fellows project, a book on unprecedented migration from around the world to the United States, which she has continued at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. In fall 2025, O’Toole will also teach a course on covering immigration at Georgetown.
• Alex W. Palmer worked on his book about the history of American intelligence in China.
• Nadim Roberts worked on his book, The Highway, which explores the legacy of colonialism and residential schooling in the Canadian Arctic. He was also awarded a 2024 Whiting Creative Nonfiction grant.
• Mayukh Sen was interviewed on PBS NewsHour and on NPR about his book Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star, which was released earlier this year. He also worked on his Fellows project, a book on the broader history of South Asian actors in Hollywood.