Keona Dordor & Lyndsey Ellis

Keona Dordor is the student recipient of the Heartland Journalism Fellowship and a rising senior at Washington University in St. Louis majoring in urban studies, with a double-minor in writing and in religious studies, all in Arts & Sciences. She is also a Chancellor’s Career Fellow and a Gephardt Institute Fox-Clark Civic Scholar. Born in Accra, Ghana, Dordor was raised in Nashville, Tennesee, since age nine, when her family relocated to the United States. Her writing explores themes and issues of religion and the challenges facing her generation. Lyndsey Ellis is a St. Louis native and Heartland Journalism Fellowship whose fiction and journalism have appeared in a variety of print and online publications. Her debut novel, Bone Broth (Hidden Timber Books, 2021), was a 2022 Friends of American Writers Literature Award winner and selected by Maryville University for use in the student curriculum. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English, and holds a master’s in fine arts from California College of the Arts in San Francisco.