In 2014, 26-year-old RS Deeren was an aspiring writer attending Columbia College, living in Ravenswood, and so poor that he was stealing tuna cans from his roommate to cook for dinner when he received notice that he won a fellowship from the Luminarts Cultural Foundation.
“I was kind of a cliche,” Deeren told the Chicago Sun-Times. “It was the first time that somebody other than a school said, ‘You’re a writer, we believe in you,’ and the money was very nice at the time.”
