Zee Dempster

2020 Sara Patton Fiction Stipend Recipient: Fantasy

A lifelong New Yorker, Zee Dempster is at the beginning of a promising writing career. She is in the final editing stage of her first manuscript titled “The Aurora Satellite,” a speculative fiction novel which visits a post-apocalyptic earth in the not so distant future. She has attended the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. In 2017, Zee presented an essay on Labor, Activism and Higher Education for the Futures Initiative at the Graduate Center, CUNY, where she is also, the Assistant Director of IRADAC. She is currently beginning work on her next novel and harvesting ideas for short stories.

Donald Antrim (Fiction Craft Lab) 

Donald Antrim is the critically acclaimed author of six books, including Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, The Hundred Brothers, The Verificationist, and The Afterlife. His most recent memoir, One Friday in April (W. W. Norton, 2021), is a searing and brave memoir that offers a new understanding of suicide as a distinct mental illness. A regular contributor to The New Yorker, Antrim has also been the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Public Library, among others. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.