Impact
The DAG Foundation launched in 2024 with the intention to support early-career and emerging artists in literature, music, and visual art. In our inaugural year, DAG awarded $20,000 grants to nonprofit organizations with strong histories of nurturing innovative artists whose work explores new directions for their art forms. Starting in 2025, we award annual $20,000 prizes to individual artists in each category.
The 2026 DAG Prize Winners:
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The DAG Prize for Music :
Luz Elena
Mendoza
Luz Elena Mendoza is a first-generation Mexican American producer and multi- disciplinary artist. She is the visionary force behind the critically acclaimed project Y La Bamba, with accolades from NPR, KEXP, and Pitchfork; Y La Bamba’s seven studio albums include Court the Storm, Mujeres, and, most recently, Lucha. The DAG prize will be used to facilitate final production of Y La Bamba’s next studio album — with a working title of Ramos — a high-fidelity archive inspired by her artistic evolution over the last couple of years. The judges praised the “multicultural and sonic uniqueness” of Mendoza’s work.
(photo credit: Nalani Hernandez-Melo)
The DAG Prize for Visual Art:
Erick Alejandro
Hernández
Erick Alejandro Hernández was born in Cuba and lives in Brooklyn. Rooted in highly temporal settings (a subway commute, a waiting room), his work explores how forms in painting can shift to better hold complex individual and collective histories. He has received numerous grants and fellowships, including from the Bronx Museum AIM Program and the Carol Schlosberg Memorial Prize for Excellence in Painting, and has had recent solo exhibitions with DIMIN, Murmurs, and Yossi Milo, along with group shows at the Bronx Museum, Perrotin, and others. In his current project, Topographies of Symbolic Space, painting explores the topographic relationships between symbolic spaces — what exists above, below, or in between — through a large-scale multipanel installation. The judges praised “the powerful investigative and allegorical exploration of shared experience” in Hernandez’s work.
(photo credit: Gioncarlo Valentine)
The DAG Prize for Literature:
Tegan Nia
Swanson
Tegan Nia Swanson is a queer teaching artist whose work explores gender, place, and accountability. Her first novel, Things We Found When the Water Went Down, was named “an inventive and beguiling debut” by Kirkus. Her novel-in-progress, We Do Not Dream of Salt Plagues, is a climate gothic love letter to queer and trans community. The judges praised Swanson’s work for its “purposeful” politics, noting the “uniqueness and audacity of her vision.”
The 2025 DAG Prize Winners:
The DAG Prize for Visual Art:
Ziba Rajabi
A visual artist whose primary practice focuses on painting, drawing, and fabric-based installations. She is the recipient of the MCAD-Jerome Fellowship for Early Career Artists and the Artist 360 Grant by the Mid-America Arts Alliance.
Her work in progress, Kotál, is an immersive, fiber-based installation that explores a spectrum of collective sentiments, including longing, grief, joy, and the nuanced interplay of emotions.
The DAG Prize for Literature:
Michael Zapata
A founding editor of MAKE Literary Magazine and the author of the novel The Lost Book of Adana Moreau. He is on the faculty of StoryStudio Chicago and the M.F.A. faculty of Northwestern University. As a public-school educator, he taught literature and writing in high schools servicing dropout students. He currently lives in Chicago, where he is working on The Census Taker, a speculative noir novel that follows the work of a Quechua entomologist in the Amazon and her son, a census taker in Chicago who documents disappeared peoples following a coup. To support the novel, Zapata will partner with AmazonFACE, a conservation and biodiversity organization, to research the devastating impacts of colonization in the Amazon. At its heart, The Census Taker is a love letter to Latinofuturism, indigenous scientists, and revolutionaries.
The DAG Prize for Music:
Elizabeth Ziman
A singer-songwriter and film composer from Brooklyn. She’s released five LPs under the name Elizabeth & the Catapult, garnering praise from The New York Times and NPR. She’s collaborated with Esperanza Spalding, Richard Swift, Dan Molad, and Gillian Welch, among others.
I Love You Still is a meditation on loss and grieving through the eyes of those she loves. Cinematic arrangements frame her intimate vocal performances.
Finalists for the 2026 DAG Prize.
Music :
Alwyn Robinson
Visual Art :
Liz Cooper
Marc Newsome
Sarah Trigg
Literature :
Sophia Terazawa
Ali Raz
Marcus Clayton
Jefferey Spivey
Maddie Norris
Mihret Sibhat
DAG 2025 Literature Finalists:
DAG proudly supports :​​​​​​​​​​​
A literary journal that, since 2002, has published one short story each month, and never published the same writer twice. One Story also offers writing classes, conferences, and an annual “Literary Debutante Ball.” One Story authors have won the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the PEN Emerging Writers Award, and have been included numerous times in the annual Best American Short Stories anthology.​​​​​​​​
An artist development organization supporting aspiring musicians in the early stages of their creative journeys. Founded in 2022, Salt Lick supports musicians by providing funding, collaborative opportunities, workshops, and strategic support from industry professionals to help musicians develop artistically, sustain their well-being, and forge viable careers.​​​​​​​
An artist-run community and arts education space that curates exhibitions, produces community events, and hosts artist residencies. Since 2008, the Wassaic Project has served hundreds of working artists and art students by providing time and space to create and exhibit their work; offering lectures, after-school programs, and summer camps; and developing programs that are creative, experimental, and accessible across the economic spectrum.