thems. artist residency
6-month, project-based artist residency in Phoenix, AZ.
About:
This is a project-based residency, where residents develop a defined body of new work. The residency supports artistic growth while fostering meaningful exchange with the LGBTQIA+ communities in Phoenix and beyond. We aim to support creative experimentation and community collaboration across Arizona.
The next application cycle will open in October 2026, with applications available on our website. We look forward to welcoming visionary creators shaping a more inclusive, community-rooted arts future.
For questions email info@themsphx.org
2026 artist in residence showcase
2026 Artists Cohort:
Our first Artist-in-Residence cohort will serve as an important pilot program and trial phase created to help the thems. phoenix team thoughtfully shape and refine the residency experience. Through guidance, feedback, and intentional trial-and-error, our inaugural residents will collaborate closely with thems. staff to build a responsible, and worthwhile experience for future artists.
Our goal is to continue developing the program into an enduring space for artists to deepen their art practice while engaging and supporting the local queer community through community-driven programming across Phoenix, AZ and alongside partner organizations.
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Patrick is a poet, playwright, educator, and multidisciplinary artist working across poetry, video, and printmaking.
Raised in a Guatemalan and Mexican immigrant household, his work explores queer Latinx identity, memory, and embodiment, often through fragmented and hybrid forms shaped by silence, ritual, and cultural inheritance.
He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University and teaches writing and poetry.
His work is invested in how language can hold contradiction, affect, and the limits of what can be said. His work has received support from the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands, the Juniper Writing Institute, and Lambda Literary.
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Lan (they/them) is a poet, performer, playwright, and filmmaker from St. Louis, Missouri. Their writing is published or forthcoming in Poets.org, The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.
Lan has written and performed for venues including The Lincoln Center, Maui Arts Cultural Center, The Theatre Communications Group National Conference, and elsewhere. Their debut film was published by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.
Their writing has been supported by Tin House, Lambda Literary, Kenyon Writers Workshop, Juniper Writers’ Institute, The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, The Center for Imagination in The Borderlands, and OMAI First Wave. Lan earned their MFA from Arizona State University.
Explore: Patrick De Leon
‘Astra Memoria’ stills provided by Patrick De Leon
His video practice layers found images, personal archives, and data sonifications to evoke memory, queer longing, desire, and grief.
‘Gospel of Faggotry’ stills provided by Patrick De Leon
Patrick De Leon, MFA, is a writer, educator, and interdisciplinary artist based in Phoenix, Arizona. His work spans poetry, video, printmaking, and photography.
‘Museum of Grief’ stills provided by Patrick De Leon
Explore: Lan Lesmiester
’Blouse’ stills provided by Lan Lesmeister
Lan’s goal is to make poetry more accessible and exciting for LGBTQIA+ people by providing workshops that will allow the larger community to learn from trans poetics, and how they may approach revision as a generative path rather than with a red pen.
‘hurt me’ stills provided by Lan Lesmeister
Lan Lesmeister, (they/them), is a poet, performer, playwright, and filmmaker from St. Louis, Missouri. Lan’s writing investigates the intersection of gender, race, beauty, and interiority.
Childlike a Child is, I Howled
as the bee stung me.
I plucked the stinger from me like a sword.
Who said Arthur pulled Excalibur from stone alone?
Alone, you pulled me from my depths, like a myth.
Like a book in a library of infinite books, find a way to hold me.
You said, I love you, infinity.
I’ve been waiting so long to love myself enough to love like that, with all of me.
The ginkgo’s leaves fall at once
like a round of applause,
like me, darling—
like me.
Written by Lan Lesmeister. Originally published in The Missouri Review.
What We Hold
In the warehouse my grandmother’s belongings
reduced to piles of trash bags.
In the camps, my uncle— a single bag,
all he owned, marked by his refugee number
sewn into burlap. Here there are no numbers.
Each bag a shadow I crack and tear
till brilliance, your áo dài refracting the tears
of light. Each silver sequin pinned like petals
off jasmine, frozen in time. Still the petals
of your perfume , I smell, it’s ghost clinging
to silk it’s faint, but the numbers cling.
What you left behind in the trash I take and
do what you taught me to do with the lost and
buried. I dig. I remember. what we keep. longing.
Written by Lan Lesmeister. Originally published in The Offing.