GO EAST Writing Fellowship

October 29–31, 2026San Francisco → Chicago

Sponsors

About the fellowship

GO EAST is a writing fellowship on Amtrak’s California Zephyr from San Francisco to Chicago. Fellows will spend three days reading, writing, and discussing what technological progress should be in service of.

Fellows

Writing

Essays from the fellowship will be published together in a digital and print zine.

Schedule

Thu, Oct 29

Depart San Francisco

Reading, writing, and discussion aboard the California Zephyr.

Fri, Oct 30

On the train

Independent writing and shared conversations.

Sat, Oct 31

Arrive in Chicago

Closing reflections and dinner.

Bonnie Chin

Bonnie Chin

currently a designer at roblox working on creative tooling and ai systems. these days you'll find me indulging in media theory, pervasive game design, or running hci reading rooms. in past lives i've also lectured on the history of children's media, had a brief software engineering stint, and hosted sidewalk chalk days.

x.com/bobawithbonniebonniechin.me
Celine Nguyen

Celine Nguyen

Celine Nguyen is a software designer and writer from California. She creates interfaces and essays to explore how intellectual and artistic work comes into being, and the economic and technological factors that shape our cultural landscape. She’s interested in the history of technology, the future of criticism, and software as a medium for subjectivity.

personalcanon.com
Eli Stark-Elster

Eli Stark-Elster

Eli is a cognitive anthropologist — he studies the technologies that people around the world and throughout history have used to induce altered states of consciousness. He does fieldwork on the indigenous use of psychedelics in Lesotho, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Colombia. On his Substack, Unpublishable Papers, he writes about black holes, child prodigies, cave art, play, aesthetics, and other strange subjects. He is also writing a book about the history and future of consciousness engineering.

eselster.orgunpublishablepapers.substack.comx.com/eselster
Emily Manges

Emily Manges

Emily Manges is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer with a background in art and technology. Most recently, she was an Entrepreneur in Residence at AI Residency through Collaborative Fund. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, which remains her longest-running performance art piece. Previously, she worked across growth and business operations at Artsy and Otis (acquired by Public.com), after beginning her career in the formal art world at MoMA and Hauser & Wirth.

emilymanges.substack.comx.com/Emily_Manges
Gaurang Alat

Gaurang Alat

Gaurang Alat is a creative technologist who blends thoughtful design, visual storytelling, and technology to turn complex ideas into intuitive experiences. His interests range from product design, photography, electronic music, to travel. Equal parts analytical and artistic, he brings a sharp eye for detail, a playful curiosity, and a genuine obsession with making things just a little more beautiful.

gaurangalat.com
Henry Zhu

Henry Zhu

I'm Henry, an artist and accidental open source maintainer! In 2018, I left my engineering job to work on Babel full-time and started the podcast Hope in Source to explore how tech, faith, and art meet in everyday life. Today I explore tools like receipt printer and my walking podcast that let tech end in the physical. I'm looking for the right limits that make room for serendipity!

henryzoo.comhopeinsource.comtwitter.com/left_pad
Jackie Luo

Jackie Luo

Jackie is the co-founder and CEO of Sigil, a startup building a new way to write for work. In her free time, she writes The Dream Machine, hosts experimental gatherings, and makes art. Once upon a time, she built products at companies like Zora and Square and studied philosophy.

jackieluo.comtwitter.com/jackiehluoare.na/jackie-luo
Jordan Lee Borgman

Jordan Lee Borgman

Jordan Borgman is a writer and translator drawn to the space between words—and worlds. Her essays have appeared or at forthcoming in Aeon, The Threepenny Review, and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and she has translated award-winning Japanese arthouse films. She holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, where she studied comparative mysticism and contemplative practices. Her writing explores how worldviews across culture and time draw the borders of what we think we know, and how mystical traditions unsettle the divide between the human and the non-human. A Maine native, she has lived in nine countries and speaks seven languages. She currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

jordanborgman.com
Julian Wise

Julian Wise

Writer, investor, lover of games. Julian has ghostwritten for top figures in Silicon Valley, attended French clown school, and lived in a van. Not for the faint of heart.

julianwise.com
Tomás Guarna

Tomás Guarna

I'm a PhD candidate in Communication at Stanford, where I research how people who build and work with AI systems understand the effects of those systems on the people who use them. I'm a media ethnographer and historian. I live between the San Francisco and Buenos Aires.

twitter.com/tomasgnabsky.app/profile/tomasgna.bsky.sociallinkedin.com/in/tomasguarna
Vincent Huang

Vincent Huang

Vincent Huang is a researcher and writer working on human-AI interaction. He is interested in media and technology that help people with self-discovery and creative expression. In his free time he enjoys personality tests, films, and taking long walks around SF.

vvhuang.commindslice.substack.comx.com/vvhuang_
Zoe Yu

Zoe Yu

Zoe Yu is a senior at Harvard studying a self-designed major in Public Thinking. She has written about culture and politics for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and New York Magazine. She calls Texas home.

zoegraceyu.comx.com/zoegraceyu/all