PSSSR's First Emerging Writers Fund Cohort
Iyman Ahmed and Owen Schmidt, Selected for PSSSR's 2026 Inaugural Cycle
Our Grantees
Iyman Ahmed has spent over a decade working inside elite universities and in management consulting, where she developed a close view of how equity language is produced and deployed inside institutions more invested in burying class politics than confronting it. Coming from a working-class background, she has been occupied with intellectual currents shaping conversations on class politics globally. Through EWF, she is developing a project on the material realities that shape discourses on the "manosphere." She is based in Montreal, QC.
Owen Schmidt is unknown beyond the readership of a small county paper in central Kentucky, and he writes between his shifts at work. He grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, and he still has not got the heart to leave the place. In a stack of books on his floor there's a copy of The Dialectic of Enlightenment, half of which he read, and he now thinks himself sometimes erudite. He listens to John Prine, climbs rocks in Red River Gorge, and watches the Wildcats with his buddies.
Why PSSSR Created the EWF
Catherine Liu founded PSSSR in 2026 as a support structure for the development of a new intelligentsia. The PSSSR operates with the belief that intellectual life should not be restricted to those with access to elite, credentialing institutions. As the worlds of traditional academia and legacy media become increasingly insular and corrupt, the EWF offers resources and support to help heterodox writers and thinkers fulfill their intellectual ambitions without compromise.
As Catherine states: “Academia and the publishing industry are in a crisis. Existing cultural institutions reproduce conformity and timidity. In order to perform ‘relevance’ and ‘activism,’ they sacrifice thoughtfulness, rigor, and craft. Furthermore, these institutions are not mentoring or developing emerging writers, and they're not producing the kind of writing PSSSR wants to see more of. The EWF is meant to offer material support and real editorial development, while recognizing the ambitions and qualities of writers whom legacy institutions have passed over.”
When choosing the grantees for our inaugural 2026 cycle, we were specifically looking for writers with:
working-class backgrounds
barriers from disability or significant caring responsibilities
precarious or informal employment
a lack of formal university credentials
or other circumstances that would limit their access to sustained intellectual support and engagement
Further, we were looking for individuals whose work would not be subsidized by elite institutions in 2026. Resources and support for writing are typically reserved for people whose backgrounds and areas of interest flatter the preferences of managerial elites. We seek to offer an alternative.
How To Support
PSSSR is proud to offer our 2026 inaugural EWF grantees the resources and support to bring their compelling and original work into the world.
The EWF addresses a crucial need in contemporary intellectual culture. The program allows isolated thinkers, writers, artists, and scholars to develop connections with others who share both their goals and their feelings of alienation at the current institutional paradigm.
At a time when both legacy media and traditional academia are riddled with intellectual dishonesty and ideological capture, we offer an alternative: a helping hand and a strong community for rigorous critical thinking and cultural analysis.
PSSSR, especially through the EWR program, addresses the desire among isolated and alienated thinkers, artists, journalists, and scholars for connection with others who share their dismay at the philistinism and reactionary attitudes that presently pervade the institutions of contemporary capitalism.
PSSSR plans to fund two Emerging Writers Fund Fellows with stipends of $2,000 per year and mentorship and editorial guidance from Tara Hefferan, Aimee Walleston, and Catherine Liu.
Your support of $2,000 can help underwrite the stipend and other costs of the EWR program.
As we look to the future, we will grow the program to provide more stipends to emerging writers.