The UCSB Writing Program in the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) is proud to announce the 2024-2025 M. Garren Tinney Travel Award Recipients: Sasha Alvarez ‘25 (College of Letters & Science, Chicana/o Studies) and Ethan Lord ‘25 (College of Letters & Science, Religious Studies with a minor in LGBTQ+ Studies). In addition, Leila Shahidi ’25 and Claire Trask ’25 received Honorable Mentions. Thanks to the M. Garren Tinney Memorial Fund, talented students each year receive an award to support travel related to their writing.
In loving memory of Michael “Garren” Tinney ‘01 (L&S English), Donna “Dee Dee” Tinney—Garren’s mother—established the M. Garren Tinney Memorial Fund at UCSB in June 2023 to honor her son’s interest in and passion for writing. The Fund provides numerous opportunities, now and into the future, for UCSB undergraduate students committed to writing and who have an interest in pursuing writing-related careers. In addition to the M. Garren Tinney Travel Awards, the fund supports the M. Garren Tinney Writing Fellows (which were announced earlier this year) and three separate M. Garren Tinney Writing Awards. Each of the Tinney Writing Awards are managed, respectively, by the Writing Program, UCSB Department of English, and the Writing & Literature program at the College of Creative Studies.
The M. Garren Tinney Travel Awards recipients were selected by a committee of Writing Program faculty from a pool of strong applicants, each with interesting travel plans. According to the M. Garren Tinney Memorial Fund Committee Chair Robert Krut, “As was the case last year, we were amazed by the scope and passion of UCSB students for writing—and how it connects to the world at large. The proposed projects were all interesting and showed great potential, reminding us once again of the incredible talent on campus.”
The award winners will use their travel award in the coming months. This spring, Sasha Alvarez will expand work on her honors research project focusing on the historical continuity of farmworker exploitation and the parallels between the Bracero Program and today's H-2A visa system. As part of this project, she will travel to key agricultural cities in California to conduct in person interviews with H-2A workers, union representatives, and other labor organizers. Also this spring, Ethan Lord will travel to San Francisco to conduct research at the GLBT Historical Society archive which houses rare artifacts connected to LGBTQ+ history. Through this research trip, Ethan will develop a project focused on the Radical Faeries, an activist and spiritual group formed in the 1970s.
M. “Garren” Tinney came from Oklahoma City to UCSB as an English major and continued his studies at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Garren passed away on December 7, 2019. Garren valued free speech, education, and above all else, using the written word as a means to communicate the many insights he garnered over 41 years as a survivor of grief and student of the human condition. Over the course of his short life, Garren prided himself on his multifaceted occupational pursuits. He worked in politics in Washington, D.C., entertainment in Los Angeles, journalism and public relations in Manhattan, New York, and finally achieved his lifelong dream of becoming a writer in Pasadena, California, completing dozens of short stories, novellas, and novels.
