T.J. Dedeaux-Norris is one of three Iowa City recipients of $10,000 grants from the Iowa Artist Fellowship Program. Less than a decade ago, Dedeaux-Norris made a film about life after hurricane Katrina and their life navigating three worlds: academia, art and their roots as “a girl from Mississippi.”

Victor Ray co-wrote an op-ed for the New York Times with Heather McGee: "Why do we have public schools? To make young people into educated, productive adults, of course. But public schools are also for making Americans. Thus, public education requires lessons about history — the American spirit and its civics — and also contact with and context about other Americans: who we are and what has made us."