MFA Alum Troy Landrum Jr. Selected as Wa Na Wari Fellow

Troy Landrum Jr. (MFA ‘21) joins the 2023 cohort of The Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute, a community story training program that brings together community-based projects with Black oral historians from around the country “to learn and explore the ethics, techniques, best practices, tensions, and dilemmas of community-based oral history and Black memory work.” The institute is a practice of Wa Na Wari, a community art space that supports Black land ownership, artistry, and belonging through its hub in Seattle’s Central District.

During this two year fellowship, Landrum’s work will focus on Black Memory through topics of Barber Shops and Beauticians, the Waterfront and Education. This project extends work begun during his MFA that speaks on the culture of the barbershop in the Black community. He writes, “this fellowship will deeply inspire my novel in progress, will give me the tools to continue to world build, to reflect and bring to life work that I started in Graduate school such as “The Guide to Manhood” while preserving the history of Black Barbers and Beauticians in Seattle.”

Learn more at the Wa Na Wari website.

Troy Landrum Jr. is a native of Indianapolis, IN and has lived in Seattle, WA for 9 years. His passion for reading and writing bloomed as he navigated a path of self-rediscovery through identity, faith, culture and his family’s migration stories from Jim Crow South to the Midwest. These intersections are at the helm of his human experience and literature process as a Black artist and oral historian. Troy graduated with a Masters in Fine Arts at the University of Washington Bothell and is currently a Program Producer for KUOW’s RadioActive Program, a freelance journalist for the South Seattle Emerald, and a Novelist. His novel In Progress explores the question of “Home” through the Historical American time period of The Great Migration. A period in American history where millions of African American people moved from the South to Northern and Midwestern cities. He dedicates his work to the brilliance of African American History and the brilliance of his family history through the work of literature and preservation.