This fundraiser will establish an annual tax-free stipend of $30,000 for the inaugural Abby Kraftowitz Fellowship. Abby Kraftowitz was a photographer whose work highlighted both the strength and vulnerability of the human spirit. She connected profoundly with her subjects, who were women and LGBT families facing trauma, addiction, eating disorders, and end-of-life illness. She studied with artists around the world, refining her unique ability to portray, with sensitivity and beauty, their pain and resilience, the ways these obstacles challenged them and their communities supported them. Her deeply personal photos were published and exhibited by the Homeless Children's Education Fund, AIDS Task Force, TIME, The Eye of Photography, Slate, the Southern Vermont Art Center, and the Madurai International Photography Festival, among others. Abby brought her boundless spirit and sense of adventure to her artistic practice, and when she passed away in January 2020 at the age of 33 after a battle with ovarian cancer, City of Asylum/Detroit decided to continue her legacy by creating a fellowship in her name. You can see some of her work at abbykraftowitz.com.

City of Asylum/Detroit offers shelter to writers and artists who are at risk in their place of origin. We are part of the International Cities of Refuge Network, a network of over 70 cities advancing freedom of expression, defending democratic values, and promoting international solidarity. Our mentors at the U.S. headquarters in Pittsburgh have energized the North Side, a once depressed community, with housing for writers, public art, a park, a restaurant, and a bookstore. At City of Asylum/Detroit, we’re bringing this vision to Detroit’s North End. 

We’ll offer long-term shelter in our Detroit properties to those who are at risk as a direct consequence of their creative activities, and a broad range of literary and artistic programs that anchor neighborhood economic development by transforming blighted properties into homes for these programs, and energize public spaces through public art with text-based components. Cities of asylum protect an increasingly wide range of writers and artists, including bloggers, novelists, playwrights, journalists, musicians, poets, non-fiction writers, visual artists, cartoonists, singer/songwriters, translators, screenwriters and publishers. This varied mosaic of creative workers, and the communities around them, engenders City of Asylum/Detroit’s most urgent goal: the radical democratization of creative expression. 

The Abby Kraftowitz Fellow will be a visual artist, likely a photographer, who creates work in Abby’s spirit of human connection, love, and courage in the face of hardship and loss.