“It was wildly uplifting to see the creative and fearless ways people are out there raising hell during these crazy times,” the Anne Feeney Hellraiser Memorial Fund declared as it announced its five 2026 grantees on Labor Day.
More than 60 rabble-rousing artists applied this year, “making the selection process both inspiring and extraordinarily difficult,” said the Fund’s Amy Berlin and Evan Greer. The five artists chosen—a folk musician, two visual artists, a poet and teaching artist, and the founder of an art program for incarcerated young people—”are carrying forward Anne’s indomitable spirit by using culture to challenge injustice, build solidarity and strengthen their communities.”
The 2026 grantees are:
Emmett Doyle
Emmett Doyle is a Minnesota-based folk musician, union carpenter and member of the Minnesota 15. Drawing on American and Irish folk traditions, his music carries what he calls the “long memory” of working-class movements into songs rooted in today’s struggles. Doyle and 14 other activists face federal conspiracy charges stemming from protests against ICE operations in Minnesota.
Julianna Sanromán
Julianna Sanromán is a Mexican-American artist rooted in Southwest Detroit and the landscapes of northeastern Jalisco, Mexico. Working across painting, installation and community-based art, she explores migration, deportation, forced family separation, grief and belonging—as well as the ways communities continue to love and care for one another across systems designed to divide them. Her work transforms memory into an act of resistance and imagines realities in which connection can endure.
Abdullah El-Khatib
Abdullah El-Khatib is the singer of Inqirad—Arabic for “extinction”—an Arabic punk band based in Los Angeles. El-Khatib helped launch Punks for Palestine, which has brought musicians, artists and activists together to raise awareness and humanitarian support for Palestinians, including funds for Anera. His work harnesses the energy of punk as a vehicle for political expression, international solidarity and collective action.
Cynthia Amoah
Cynthia Amoah is a Ghanaian-American poet, national speaker and teaching artist whose work is grounded in the belief that language has power: it can name us, free us and return us to ourselves. Through poetry, performance and education, Amoah challenges narratives imposed on Black people, women, immigrants and communities whose experiences are too often flattened or told for them. Her work creates space for people to reclaim their identities and tell their own stories.
Max Cohen and Crossroads Art Club
Max Cohen and his brother Jacob run Crossroads Art Club, a free, biweekly open studio for young people ages 12 to 21 held in pretrial detention at Crossroads Juvenile Center in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The program offers communal studio time where young people can draw, paint and create while Jacob plays a handmade cello fashioned from discarded materials. Crossroads treats art not as a privilege, but as an essential means of expression, connection and possibility for young people inside a maximum-security facility.
The Hellraiser Fund was created to support artists and activists who carry on the spirit of labor singer-songwriter Anne Feeney: using culture to challenge injustice, build community and inspire people to act.
We wish we could support every one of this year’s extraordinary applicants. Artists who were not selected are strongly encouraged to apply again next year. Applications will reopen on Anne Feeney’s birthday, July 1, 2027.
Please consider making a donation to the Anne Feeney Hellraiser Fund. Your support will help us continue—and expand—these grants to artists who are finding creative and fearless ways to raise hell.