UBC’s School of Creative Writing is pleased to announce that Assistant Professor Alex Marzano-Lesnevich is a 2026 recipient of a $50,000 USD Creative Capital Award for their forthcoming book Both and Neither. Both and Neither is a work of memoir and haunted nonfiction about life beyond the binary, to be published by Doubleday in early 2027.
Founded in 1999, Creative Capital is an American nonprofit organization that champions artistic freedom of expression by providing broad-based, grassroots support for individual artists through its national, open call grant program and services to help artists build sustainable practices. The Creative Capital Award provides artists with unrestricted project grant funds for the creation of innovative new work in any discipline.
“Creative Capital remains unwavering in our mission to support individual artists creating new work as a powerful catalyst for freedom of thought and freedom of expression in our democracy,” says Christine Kuan, president and executive director, Creative Capital.
Marzano-Lesnevich, a US citizen, joined the School of Creative Writing in 2024 and recently received a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant for the same upcoming book.
“I am so grateful that organizations like Creative Capital are continuing to fund and support the vital work of making art in a time when cultural resistance and hope are so dearly needed. I have long admired Creative Capital and to have its support for a book explicitly about trans history means everything,” says Marzano-Lesnevich.
The artists receiving the 2026 Creative Capital Award and the newly created 2026 State of the Art Prize, which awards residents of each US state and is also administered by Creative Capital, were selected from a total pool of 4,546 applications. Project proposals were evaluated through an external review process that included 107 industry leaders, programmers, cultural producers, and artists, and culminated in discipline-specific final panels.
The awarded works explore a range of topics including: state violence, democracy, poverty, the fentanyl/opioid crisis, consumerism, autism, healthcare, labor, conservation, dementia, ageism, patriarchy, the Altadena fires, gentrification, family, nightlife, deafness, sex, color theory, bull-fighting, urbanism, religion, famine, and war.
Learn more about the prize and its recipients here.
