2025 Winners

Lauren Williams is a journalist and audio producer based in Brooklyn, New York. She has reported on the intersection of art and politics for WBUR, Boston’s NPR station, and radio programs like All Things Considered and Here & Now. Williams also writes and produces for KUOW and NPR’s noontime show, Soundside. Recently, she wrote about the political history of marriage in the United States for the Signal Award-winning show, White Picket Fence, and produced an audio documentary about Black avant-garde composers for the Peabody Award-winning program, Afropop Worldwide. She got her start in journalism at D Magazine, Bust Magazine, and The Paris Review.

She has degrees from The American University of Paris and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Williams will use the grant to pursue a story about art history in the American South.

Katie Thornton is a print and audio journalist covering media, infrastructure, and history. Her work has been published in Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, National Geographic, 99% Invisible, NPR, BBC, and many more. In 2022, she made a Peabody-winning podcast in her closet: “The Divided Dial,” with WNYC’s “On The Media,” dove into the history, politics, and economics of conservative talk radio. Katie has also been honored with a Fulbright Fellowship and grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, and can otherwise be found digging through print and audio archives, or touring with her bands.

Thornton will use the grant to pursue a story about language and politics.