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Congratulations to our 2025 Mimi Taylor Grimes Scholars.

Our 2025 Mimi Taylor Grimes Scholars and the Center for Story & Witness team.

Congratulations to our 2025 Mimi Taylor Grimes Scholars. Watch this space for news on our 2026 program! 

Created to honor the legacy of the beloved educator, advocate, and Center for Story & Witness supporter, the Mimi Taylor Grimes Scholarship Fund takes its inspiration from Mimi’s deeply held belief that in order to heal, survivors first need to be heard. 

Our 2025 class of Mimi Scholars are living that legacy. These inspiring writers, activists and artists received full scholarships to The Stories We Tell, our award-winning Center for Story & Witness writing program for those who have lived through or witnessed gender-based violence or other human rights violations, co-led by Center for Story & Witness Co-Founders R. Clifton Spargo and Anne K. Ream, who is Mimi’s daughter.

Congratulations to our 2025 Mimi Scholars! And writers: Watch this space in the coming weeks for news on applying for a 2026 scholarship.



Nikki Patin and Yasmeen Waheed, two of our 2025 Mimi Tayler Grimes Scholars.

Support the Mimi Taylor Grimes Scholarship Fund and give a survivor the gift of change.

Help us give the gift of change by supporting the 2026 Mimi Taylor Grimes Scholarship Fund. Every $2000 raised provides a full scholarship for a writer waiting to take part in The Stories We Tell, Center for Story & Witness’s award-winning testimonial writing program for those who have lived through or witnessed gender-based violence. Thanks, in advance, for your support.



Educator and activist Mimi Taylor Grimes (né Melva Luker).

A life of love and service: About Mimi Taylor Grimes.

Mimi Taylor Grimes was an educator who taught for three decades in suburban-area Chicago elementary schools before becoming a supervisor of teaching education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. 

Working to create a world free of gender-based violence, an issue that had directly impacted her family, was a labor of love for Mimi. 

An outspoken advocate for a victim rights, Mimi was a founding member of The Voices and Faces Project’s speakers bureau; served as a senior advisor to the board of directors of the Arkansas Coalition Against Sexual Assault; and, in recognition of her efforts to engage the broader public in the fight for gender justice, received the National Sexual Violence Resource Council’s “Visionary Voice Award” at a 2011 Clinton Presidential Center ceremony.

Following Mimi’s 2024 death her husband, Dave Grimes, and children, Robert Ream, Kary Ream, and Anne Ream launched the Mimi Taylor Grimes Scholarship Fund.