Ohio Shorts 2026

Hanif Abdurraqib is an award-winning poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus. His newest publication, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House, 2024), was a New York Times bestseller, longlisted for the National Book Award in nonfiction, and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. His previous book, A Little Devil in America (Random House, 2021), won an Andrew Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burn Prize. In 2021 Abdurraqib was named a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2024 he was named a Windham-Campbell Prize recipient. Abdurraqib is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.

Addi Byler (she/her) is a multimedia artist and illustrator based in Columbus. She is a sophomore at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, pursuing her BFA in illustration. Her practice includes gouache, digital art, and collage, among other mediums. She explores a variety of subjects including the natural world, portraiture, and nostalgic media and themes. She runs a small business selling prints of her artwork. She is also a coleader of The Sketchbook, an arts and literary magazine. Featured in the 2025 Ohio Shorts program, Byler’s stop-motion animation Yarn Rage delved into the perspective of a young girl untangling conflict in her family. Find her on Instagram @_addi.arts_ or explore her prints on her Etsy shop.