welcome
J. K. Fowler is a current fellow in the CA for the Arts Grassroots Artists Advocacy Program (GAAP), current Executive Director of the Bay Area Book Festival, Policy Analyst and Special Programs/Community Outreach with BAMBD, CDC, and Operations Support for APEN and APEN Action. Previously, he founded and ran Nomadic Press, a community rooted publishing house headquartered in Oakland and sat on Oakland's Cultural Affairs Commission, during which time he helped launch the Oakland Poet Laureate Program. He is currently most interested in the intersections of civic bodies, private development, and arts organizations and community benefits agreements that can help to ensure artist and arts organization retention in the cities that they love and support. He feels artists and arts organizations have the right to remain in the cities that they love and support and not be priced out by the influx of new development projects. He is interested in launching an advocacy body that will help communities of artists and arts organizations navigate the extremely confusing processes involved in negotiating community benefits agreements between private developers, civic bodies, and various artists and arts organizations who are sometimes not aligned around what the most effective way forward is.
He believes deeply in the transformational power of self-determination, mycelial curiosity and inquiry, justice, and the act of intentionally weaving (and tending to) community. He is currently working on a book titled Making Space.
the nomadic foundation
Nomadic Foundation was founded in 2023 and builds directly on the important work of Nomadic Press, a national award-winning small press that was headquartered in Oakland, California, and operated from 2011–2023.
MAKING SPACE: THE ART OF CENTERING
Making Space offers aspiring small publishers and cultural creators the nuts-and-bolts knowledge for how to start and run a small press and host cultural programming. This wide-ranging nuts-and-bolts "how to publish" creative nonfiction text is paired with the aesthetic philosophy of literally and figuratively making space on the page and stage and pulls from the experience of founding and running Nomadic Press and national-award winning small press that was in operation from 2011–2023.
