Current Cheuse Fellows

Matti Ben-Lev is a queer nonfiction writer and poet based in Northern Virginia. His writing has appeared in McSweeney's, Rumpus, CRAFT, X-R-A-Y, HAD, Ekphrastic Review, and elsewhere. His chapbook, letters to jimi hendrix, is forthcoming from Fifth Wheel Press. He is the assistant nonfiction editor for the intersectional feminist lit mag So To Speak.

With this fellowship, Matti will travel to Spain to tour sites and archives of the Spanish Civil War, mapping his route to the journeys and experiences of the journalists who documented it (like Orwell), the activists who inspired it (Emma Goldman), and the anti-fascist fighters. This supports his work on political activism, anti-fascism, and labor struggles. Matti is currently at work on a book-length lyric essay about Emma Goldman.

Betty Walter (she/her) is a second-year MFA candidate studying poetry. She began the journey at Mason in Fall 2022 as a non-degree student and joined the program full-time in Fall 2024.  Betty is on the Poetry Daily team, participating in the editorial process and undertaking outreach projects to expand readership.  “It’s been an absolute joy and privilege to be studying at Mason with so many creative, hard-working, talented and visionary writers—peers and faculty.”

With the Cheuse Center Fellowship, Betty will travel western Netherlands to survey major water works and environmental projects that have been undertaken in the last 100 years to keep the Netherlands afloat.  She is especially interested in innovative ways in which the country has adapted to the unpredictable and threatening North Sea, as well as what is planned for the future to ensure its viability given encroaching risks from climate change.  This research will inform several writing projects, including a poetry collection for her third-year thesis, and a non-fiction accounting of how the Dutch have mustered public will to achieve a comprehensive vision of compatible human living with the natural world.

Alexander Holcomb is a second-year MFA fiction candidate. He studied journalism and political science at the University of Tennessee near his hometown of Rogersville, Tennessee. After school, he worked in marketing and, much more enjoyably, education. He writes about culture, trauma, and religious deconstruction—among other phenomenal topics to bring up at Thanksgiving.

With the Cheuse Fellowship, Alexander will hike El Camino de Santiago, a historically Christian pilgrimage from southern France to northwestern Spain. The path travels over 400 miles to the supposed resting place of Saint James the Greater in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. After completing the route, Alexander will also visit the Alhambra, an architectural marvel of the historic Islamic world, to gain further perspective on the religious history of Spain. These travels will inform a long short story for his collection that explores American variations on love and spiritual ecology outside the United States.