Dear Friends and Family,

We hope this message finds you supported by your community as we come to the close of another difficult year. Between ongoing attacks on the rights of immigrants, people of color, and queer and trans folks and a historic government shutdown leaving many of our most vulnerable without critical social safety nets, we know people are struggling. However, we still believe that art and original storytelling is a light through the darkness. We know that our stories continue to be needed, and we are reaching out for your help to support our work for the upcoming year. 

We have an incredibly exciting and formative opportunity on the horizon. We have been accepted into the 2026 Rideback RISE Fellowship, a program that provides mid-career POC creators with a first-of-its-kind platform to develop commercial film and TV projects that accelerate racial equity. This is such an incredible opportunity that will help us to develop our professional and creative skills in TV and film, and we absolutely can’t wait to begin working with the entire team and our cohort in Los Angeles. 

However, this opportunity means that we will have to relocate to Los Angeles for the entirety of next year and devote as much of our time and energy into this program as possible, which means we won’t have much time to do other work that will bring in immediate income. The fellowship awards individual artists a stipend of $40,000, but because we applied and got accepted as a team we will need to share that money between the two of us. We are launching this campaign to raise an additional $40,000 to support us financially through this logistically challenging relocation and through the duration of our time in Los Angeles. 

If you’re able, please consider donating to this fund to help us make the best of this amazing opportunity. Being Rideback RISE Fellows will help us continue to grow and develop as artists, and we are so, so grateful. This next step in our journey as storytellers will help finetune our ability to tell compelling stories for the big and small screen as we continue to immerse ourselves in the creative work of writing subversive comedies and emotionally-intimate dramas. Every donation of any size will help us continue to invest in our work as artists as we attempt to uplift the stories of our communities on stage and screen. 

Please consider helping us reach our goal by making one final contribution before the end of the year. If you can’t contribute financially, we would be grateful if you would help us spread the word about our campaign by sharing the link with your network or via social media. You can also set up recurring donations of any size ($10, $50, $100, or more!) per month to support our work year-round. Every dollar counts and is appreciated.

Your year-end donations will help springboard what we hope to be a year of creative work in 2026. In addition to our deepest gratitude, we also want to make sure we give back to the community supporting us in return.

We would not be here without generous people like you and we deeply appreciate you helping to fill in the gaps so that we can continue to focus on our art. Your support has made it possible for us to have spent the last 17 years making art as a team. Every encouraging text message, email, and dollar has gone and will continue to go directly to keeping these stories alive. 

Once again, thank you so much for your consideration. We're so grateful for our communities’ ongoing love and support. 

With Love, 

Kit and Melissa