NEWS

Tema Stauffer is the recipient of a Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship award for her recent series, Southern Fiction. She also received Small Grant Awards in 2019 and 2021 and Major Grant Awards in 2020 and 2022 for this body of work from East Tennessee State University’s Research Development Committee.  Daylight Books released a monograph of Southern Fiction in October 2022. The book of 37 large-format color photographs includes essays by writers Casey Cep, Lauren Rhoades, and Honorée Fanonne Jeffers.

Her new series, Wonderlands, is on view at ETSU’s Reece Museum from January 12 – May 27. The production of Wonderlands also received funding from two research grants from ETSU. Author Charles Baxter gave a lecture on March 10 in conjunction with the exhibition and events in ETSU’s 2026 Literary Festival will be held at the museum.

Tema Stauffer is the 2026 Juror for the Allan P. DeLoach Memorial Prize in Photography and gave an artist talk in the Department of Art at Vanderbilt University on April 9, 2026.

One of her photographs from Wonderlands received the “Best in Show” award in the Infinite Weight, Present Histories Third Annual Exhibition in 2026 at the University of West Georgia juired by Erin Dunn, Curator of Modern and Contempory Art at the Telfair Museum in Savannah, GA.