CREATIVE POWER AWARD

The Spark Central Creative Power Award is gifted to inspiring individuals with Spokane roots who embody the creativity, innovation, and imagination of Spark Central’s mission. These individuals serve as shining examples of what can be done when we nurture our creative power and follow where it leads.

SHARMA SHIELDS is the author of a short story collection, Favorite Monster, and two novels, The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac and The Cassandra. Sharma’s short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Electric Lit, Catapult, Slice, Slate, Fairy Tale Review, Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, Fugue, and elsewhere and have garnered such prizes as the 2020 PNBA Award, a 2020 Artist Trust Fellowship, 2016 Washington State Book Award, the Autumn House Fiction Prize, the Tim McGinnis Award for Humor, and the A.B. Guthrie Award for Outstanding Prose. She runs a small press, Scablands Books, and is a contributing editor for Moss. Sharma has worked in independent bookstores and public libraries throughout Washington State and is currently the Writing Education Specialist for Spokane Public Library.

JULIA SWEENEY
2017

JULIA SWEENEY is an actress, comedian, and author known for her stint on Saturday Night Live and her powerful solo shows. A native of Spokane, Washington, Sweeney went to Hollywood in the 1980s with aspirations of being a business executive at the studios before realizing that acting was her true calling. Her latest book, If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother, is on parenting and being parented. Julia Sweeney was the first-ever recipient of Spark Central’s Creative Power award.

RAND & ROBYN MILLER
2018

RAND MILLER & ROBYN MILLER are the legendary video game designers who created Myst, Riven, and recently, Obduction. Video games are such a huge part of the culture it’s hard to remember what it was like in 1993, when brothers Robyn and Rand Miller, working out of their parents’ basement in Spokane, released Myst. The New York Times called Myst “a new art form… a combination of surreal futurism and old-fashioned imagery that moves beyond cinema.” Wired called Myst “beautiful, complicated, emotional dark intelligent, absorbing, the only thing like itself…” Rand Miller is still developing new and exciting worlds as the CEO of Cyan Worlds and Robyn has been making music and directing critically acclaimed independent films.

--excerpt from an introduction by Jess Walter

SANDRA WILLIAMS
2019

SANDRA WILLIAMS is a community organizer, filmmaker, and entrepreneur with a decades-long background focusing on discrimination, equity, and social justice. She is the publisher and editor of the Black Lens, the only African American focused newspaper in Eastern Washington and is the founder of the much-anticipated Carl Maxey Center. She also offers training and Board Development to businesses and non-profit organizations.

MARK STEILEN
2020

MARK STEILEN is an award-winning screenwriter, producer, and director from Spokane. He wrote the recent hit movie Tag for Warner Brothers Pictures (about a group of Gonzaga Prep graduates who play tag into adulthood) and has worked on the television shows Shameless, Divorce, Madame Secretary, and Mozart in the Jungle, where he was part of a writing team that won a Golden Globe. He wrote and directed the movie, The Settlement, with John C. Reilly and has been a writer, producer, and second-unit director on several other movies, such as Hall Pass, The Three Stooges, and There’s Something About Mary.

GINGER EWING
2021

GINGER EWING is an arts educator, advocate, and organizer living in Spokane. She is the executive director and co-founder of Terrain Spokane. She began her career as the Curator for Cultural Literacy at the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture (MAC) where she developed and administered many successful programs. This includes a professional development program for high-school students interested in becoming exhibit interpreters; a K-20 American Indian educational program; and a monthly after-hours program meant to draw in new museum-goers. In addition to running Terrain, Ginger also mentors Black, Indigenous, and other artists of color through a state-wide mentorship program, sits on the Boards of Artist Trust, Whipsmart, Keep Music Live, and the Washington State Arts Commission, and is on the Advisory Committee for All in Washington.

Liz Rognes
2022

LIZ ROGNES is a singer/songwriter, composer, teacher, and writer. She co-founded Girls Rock Lab, a youth music program that amplifies the voices of girls and non-binary kids, and she is a past recipient of a Spokane Arts Award in Inclusion. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Eastern Washington University.