2023 Wellspring Fellows Announced

About The Wellspring Fellowship and Process

This is the first time The Well has held an open invitiation for applications for the Wellspring Fellowship, receiving 14 fantastic applications from a diverse pool of candidates, each asked about how their life or work intersects with arts and wellness, how they may feel underresourced or underrepresented, and what they hope to learn and share during the Fellowship.

Applicants shared the particular challenges of mindful occupation while being a refugee, a senior citizen, an art student, trauma survivor, multi-racial and other intersectional issues.

Two of our staff, two trustees and two former Fellows reviewed and recommended over two rounds. It was a challenging process as all the applicants were worthy and interesting humans. We ended up with three very close candidates so awarded one full and two co-Fellowships.

The Recipients

Sheila McMullin: 2023 Winter Wellspring Fellow

Sheila McMullin is a poet, writing coach, and budding somatic herbalist. She is the author of daughterrarium from Cleveland State University Poetry Center and an Advisory Board Member of the Contemporary Irish Arts Center of Los Angeles. A fierce advocate for youth storytellers, she is a proud co-editor of Humans of Ballou and The Day Tajon Got Shot, both written by teen authors and published by Shout Mouse Press. Through her love for words, herbs, and composting, she crafts handmade paper out of herbal marc, seeds, and recycled materials as an act of devotion to the natural world. Based in Los Angeles, she works with city magick to turn seeds of ideas into richly crafted and moving stories with storytellers of all experience levels through one-on-one coaching, creative workshops, and meditative practices. Nourishing heart and intuition to tell our stories, visit www.thewritemagick.com

Elena Estella Green & Ali Sina Doosti: 2023 CoFellows

Elena Estella Green is a Poet living in Cincinnati, OH. Originally from New York City, Elena has published her work in various anthologies like Mindful Poetry Moments, Anthropocene, the Art Academy Magazine, Inter-religious  Dialogue Journal, For a Better World 2021 etc. A recent graduate of the Conscious Feminine Leadership Academy at Women Writing for a Change. She presented her practicum workshop on Diving into Deep Writing & Reading at The Well, Autumn 2022. Elena is currently working on her first chapbook. 

Ali Sina Doosti is an education activist. He graduated from the American University of Afghanistan with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. He also studied social work at Kabul University. He is a co-founder of the Rainbow Cultural Diversity Summer Program, which nurtures cultural diversity and tolerance through dialogue and conversation among students.

Background

A wellspring is an original and bountiful source. At The Well, we seek to collaborate with, feature and learn from original voices in mindfulness, music, movement and creativity via The Wellspring Fellowship.

The Wellspring Fellowship is a four month virtual residency designed to lift up and share the work of our fellows, and to broaden our understanding of how to best serve personal growth, relational empathy and collective, public reconciliation and healing.

Fellows receive a stipend and an opportunity for their programs or process to be featured in The Well’s portal. Additionally, Wellspring Fellows will attend several Well Events (both internal strategy sessions and external public programs) throughout the four-month period.

Each fellowship comes with an intentional agreement to best match our individual fellow’s goals and to determine the most meaningful collaboration.

Former Fellows:

Founding Fellow, Kara Pierson

Summer/Fall 2021 Fellow: Sarah Yeung

Winter 2021 Fellow: Isti Toq'ah