American Atheist Surly Grant Winners Round One
I am pleased to announce the first round of my Surly Grant winners for The American Atheist Convention. This event takes place March 28-31 in Austin, Texas and is going to be bigger and better than ever. Why is that you ask? Because now, with the help of Surly Grants, even more awesome people will be in attendance! Hooray!
In the past my Surly grant winner announcements have included long, flowing paragraphs describing the grant winners in detail with links to follow them and ways to find out more about them, but things are a bit different for this event. American Atheist Con is one of the biggest atheist events of the year, and because not everyone on this list is an out-atheist, I am limiting some of the information shared. I am only posting the first names of each winner and if requested, pseudonyms only. Not all of the winners have requested to be anonymous and some are very open about their philosophies and life styles but to to keep things fair, I am limiting the info for everyone. But do trust me, I got to read their applications and these people are even more fabulous than the limited information listed below.
Now, let’s give a warm welcome to our first round of winners!
Cheers!
The winners:
1. Kaila is a mom who plans studying nuclear technology. She has a love of science, nature and strawberry ice cream.
2. Stefanie is a mother, a singer-songwriter and private voice coach, a skeptic, and an advocate for human rights. She prides herself on honesty, authnticity, and an awkward sense of humor. She encourages education and fights for art and beauty in our diverse world.
3. Emily is a writer who is interested in state-church separation and social issues including free-expression, LGBT, and women’s rights. A lifelong book lover, Emily’s hobbies include reading, astronomy, and Minecraft.
4. Kim is a musician and recently out-atheist who wishes to remain anonymous at this time. We welcome her to the community.
5. Stephanie is enjoying a mixed marriage with a wonderful Christian man in Phoenix, Arizona. Although a lifelong Atheist, Stephanie has found much spirituality through her 12 years in 12 Step programs.
6. SB plays the clarinet and saxophone, and has a B.S. in environmental science. She did carpentry and natural building for a few years, and was a professional allomother– that is a babysitter and pre-school teacher rolled into one. She has also been a kitchen worker, a data analyst, GIS mapper, and a copy editor. Right now, she does community outreach and public education about energy efficiency. She hopes to use this grant as an inspiration to start blogging.
WOOOOHOOO! Congrats to this first round of grant winners! I’m so happy I get to help in this small way and really I look forward to seeing you all at the American Atheist Convention!
And to the rest of you out there, If you identify or present as a woman and would like to apply for a grant for me to pay for your ticket to the AA conference, there is still time. Go here to apply. And if you would like to donate to my grant program, go here. Or you can go to my Etsy shop and buy a necklace to help.
Thanks to everyone who has chipped in so far. I couldn’t do this without help from the community. If you have helped in anyway, either by donating, buying a necklace from me or helping to spread the word about this project, please know that it is appreciated and that you are all fantastic and give me hope for the future. Our community gets stronger and bigger by the day.
I will announce more winners next week! If you want to go to this event, go apply now!
Hurray! Great job, Amy:) And Kim, welcome to the A/S community.
Yay! Congratulations to all the recipients and many thanks to Amy for being freaking awesome!
Congratulations everybody! You all seem fabulous. And, SB, best of luck with the blog :D
That’s me! I’m SB! I have started blogging, you can check it out at strangesally.wordpress.com. I was waiting for Skepchick to announce this, so I’m going to do a post about it and how exciting this is tonight.
Yay!! Congrats!! It is looking like I’ll be at the convention, as well. Was hoping for CONvergence but it was just too complicated, so I think this is a great (perhaps even better!) “runner up”. Need to work out the kinks but I am getting excited, now. :)
Grats to all the winners!
Congratulations, worthy winners all! (But a small special shoutout to SB, whom I know from around the traps.)