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Rooted in her native Miami, Monica Berra is a filmmaker drawn to the poetry of the archive, specializing in documentaries that weave the past into the present. Her work has appeared on HBO, PBS, WORLD Channel, Field of Vision, NYT Op-Docs, YouTube Originals, The Atlantic, and beyond. Most recently, she co-produced Sasha Wortzel’s feature documentary River of Grass (True/False 2025); produced John Maggio’s Paul Anka: His Way (Toronto 2024); and produced HBO’s Emmy-nominated feature A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks (Tribeca 2021). Endlessly captivated by the alchemy of archival discovery, Monica believes in its power to reshape the stories we tell. She is the 2025 RiverRun Film Festival Spark Award recipient and was a 2023–2024 Impact Partners Producing Fellow. She is also a proud member of the Archival Producer Alliance, Video Consortium, and Brown Girls Doc Mafia, and holds an MFA in documentary filmmaking from Wake Forest University.
An accomplished concert pianist and piano pedagogue, Jiayin Shen holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance from Peabody Institute of Music at the Johns Hopkins University. She was the youngest student ever admitted to the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing at age 7, brings to her performances extraordinary artistry and charismatic stage presence. She has performed on major international concert stages such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, National Gallery of Arts in D.C., Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall and Beijing Concert Hall. In addition to her extensive solo endeavors, Dr. Shen is actively involved in chamber music performances. Jiayin and the pioneering moving-image artist Eric Dyer co-founded Duo Kinetica in 2022. The Duo pushes the boundary of traditional art forms by their collaboration. Her residency at The Studios of Key West will include solo performance, working on Duo Kinetica projects, as well as collaboration with poet Peter Fortunato. She has taught at Peabody Institute prep division and currently teaches at Third Street Music School Settlement in NY.
Peter Fortunato is an author, artist, and educator, who has been a student of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism for more than 50 years. He is a yogi and shaman as well as a certified hypnotherapist, who maintains a private counseling practice in Ithaca, NY where he is active in a couple of spiritual communities, including Namgyal Monastery, the North American seat of H.H. the Dalai Lama. He has been awarded numerous literary prizes for his poetry and performance work. His most recent collection, World Headquarters was published by Fomite Press, in 2024, which also released his novel Carnevale in 2019. A memoir, Desert Wind: My Life in Qatar, was published by Cayuga Lake Books in 2023—among other things it covers his experiences over four years as a practicing Buddhist while living and teaching in an emirate ruled under sharia law. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he was awarded the Randall Jarrell Fellowship, and from Cornell University a BA in English. Mr. Fortunato taught at Cornell and Ithaca College for many years, and in Qatar taught seminars in literature and psychology to future doctors at Weill Cornell Medicine. Among his honors are the Emily Dickinson Prize of the Poetry Society of America, a Pablo Neruda Prize from the Oklahoma Arts Council, and a Yeats Poetry Prize from the WB Yeats Society of NY.
Artist Eric Dyer, dubbed The Modern Master of the Zoetrope by Creative Capital, brings animation into the material world through his sequential images, sculptures, and installations. As visual turntablist in Duo Kinetica, a collaborative project with world-renowned pianist Jiayin Shen, he performs motion-artworks live. Dyer has been honored as a Fulbright Fellow, Sundance New Frontier Artist, Creative Capital Grantee, Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor (UK), and Guggenheim Fellow; while his films have won numerous awards, including Best Animated Film and Best Experimental Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and Jury’s Choice, Jury’s Citation, and Director’s Choice awards at the Black Maria Film and Video Festival. Dyer has been a visiting artist at institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, USA), East China Normal University (Shanghai, China), California Institute of the Arts (Los Angeles, USA), and the Royal College of Art (London, UK). His films and interactive animated sculptures have been widely exhibited at prestigious international events and venues such as the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), Ars Electronica (Austria), Tabakalera (Spain), ARoS Museum of Modern Art (Denmark), the screens of Times Square (New York City), and at the Cairo and Venice Biennales. The importance of Dyer’s work has also been recognized in leading academic books in the discipline of Animation Studies, including: Re- imagining Animation: the Changing Face of the Moving Image (Bloomsbury); Pervasive Animation (Routledge); Animation: A World History (Routledge); The Crafty Animator: Handmade, Craft-based Animation and Cultural Value (Palgrave); Art Journal (CAA publications); and A New History of Animation (Thames & Hudson). He teaches at UMBC in Baltimore, and his TED talk, The Forgotten Art of the Zoetrope [go.ted.com/ericdyer] has been viewed over 1.2 million times.
M. L. Rio has been an actor, a bookseller, an academic, and a music writer. An avid road-tripper and record collector, when she’s not on the hunt for her next big score, she lives in South Philadelphia with the world’s best road dog, Marlowe. She holds an MA in Shakespeare studies from King’s College London and Shakespeare’s Globe and a PhD in English from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her bestselling first novel, If We Were Villains, has been published in 22 countries. Her first novella, Graveyard Shift, was a USA Today and Sunday Times bestseller. Her second novel, Hot Wax, was published by Simon & Schuster in September 2025.
Sydney Rose Maubert (b. 1996) is a Haitian-Cuban artist and architect based in Miami. She holds architecture degrees from Yale University and the University of Miami, with minors in writing and art. She is the founder of Sydney R. Maubert LLC, an award-winning mural and art practice that has received support from the Graham Foundation, Oolite Arts, NALAC, and others. Her work has been exhibited nationally at venues such as mtnspace gallery, Yale North Gallery, GreenSpace Miami, and is part of the 21C Museum’s permanent collection. Maubert has held fellowships at Cornell University and the Illinois Institute of Technology, and has participated in several artist residencies, including AIRIE Artist in Residence in the Everglades and Bakehouse Art Complex. She currently serves on the Center for Architecture’s Scholarship Committee. Her writing has appeared in the Avery Review, Log, and Drawing Matter, and she was recognized as a New Progressive by Architect Magazine.
David Gilbert is an artist living in Los Angeles. His work has been shown nationally and internationally and is included in the permanent collection of LACMA and the Marciano Foundation, Los Angeles. Previously, he has been an artist-in-residence at La Maison Dora Maar, Yaddo, Lighthouse Works, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In 2024, The North Carolina Museum of Art, Winston-Salem / SECCA presented Flutter, the first museum survey of his work. Wayne Koestenbaum wrote Gilbert is “a photographer whose beat is the afterlife as it takes place now, in this studio, this room, among these bedclothes and paint stains and wigs and strings” in a feature about his work in the February 2019 issue of Artforum.
image: Captive, 2021 (color photograph, 40 x 27 inches)
Sofia Valiente is an artist and a visual anthropologist based in Miami, FL. Her work explores the complex histories involving Everglades’ drainage and South Florida’s development at large. Specifically, her work looks into counter-histories—critically interrogating the constructions of narratives, authority, agency, and truth-making. Sofia’s books: Miracle Village (2014); Foreverglades (2019); and debut film Ivy Ridge (2024) have received awards from World Press Photo, Knight Foundation, Cannes Indie Shorts, and the State of Florida, Department of Cultural Affairs. Sofia’s work has been published in numerous media outlets including: Time, the Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine, NPR, and American Photo Magazine. Her projects have been exhibited internationally in various museums and photography festivals around the world. Sofia is also a full-time Lecturer of Photography in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Miami.
Eszter Sziksz is a Hungarian artist whose practice combines printmaking, installation, and video to explore memory, presence, and human connection. She has lived and worked internationally, with projects spanning Europe, Asia, and the United States.
Her work has been featured in exhibitions such as Skyway 2024: A Contemporary Collaboration (Sarasota Art Museum, FL), the International Print Triennial (Krakow, Poland), the Boston Printmakers North American Print Biennial (juried by Elizabeth Rudy, Harvard Art Museums), and the upcoming Human Nature: Envisioning the Environment (Castellani Art Museum, NY, 2026–27). Solo presentations include Let it Go (Gallery114, Tampa, 2025) and The Language of Ephemera (SPAACES, Sarasota, 2022).
She is the recipient of grants and awards including the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant (2024), a Puffin Foundation Grant (2023), and the Prix de Print Award from Art in Print Magazine, where her work was also a cover feature. Her practice has been discussed in Printmaking Today (Richard Noyce, “Extended Printmaking,” Summer 2024) and Art in Print.
Her works are held in collections including the Zuckerman Museum of Art (University of North Florida), Szent István Museum (Hungary), and the International Artists Collective Museo del Brigantaggio (Italy).
Eszter earned her MFA from Memphis College of Art and her Doctorate in Liberal Arts (DLA) from the University of Pécs, Hungary. She teaches Fine Arts/Printmaking at Ringling College of Art + Design in Sarasota, Florida.
Wendell Smith (b.1972) is a contemporary artist currently living and working in Atlanta, GA. His work engages with the Caribbean visual traditions, Afro-folk, Indo-Caribbean and Euro-centric ideas that have shaped the diasporic identity of the region. As a transformative element, it bridges the historical and contemporary-Atlantic and Caribbean worlds through recurring themes of displacement and reconstruction. Central to the work is the concept of memory both personal and collective. The narratives weave autobiographical experience with the ancestral and cultural histories. As a structural device, it is manifested through fragmented forms, overlapping shapes, and intuitive makes, suggesting movement, depth, and emotional power.
Educated both in the Caribbean and North America, he moderates conversations between the two regions presenting a narrative of intercultural experiences. He pursued studies in studio arts at the University of the West Indies, Creative Arts Center, Trinidad, and later at the Savannah College of Art and Design graduating with an MFA in Painting. He holds many awards most notably the Fulbright scholarship, the Artist Fellowship Grant, and Puffin Foundation Emerging Artist Grant. In addition, he has completed a number of artist residency fellowships both within the US and internationally including: Unpack Studios, Havana Cuba, Apapacho PROArtes Mex Art Residency, Mexico City, FaveLab Artist Residency, Athens, Greece, ArteSumapaz Residency Columbia, Virginia Center for Creative Arts , USA, and Vermont Studio Center, USA. His work has been exhibited at: Conversatorio, La Casa de la Salamandra, Havana, Cuba, THINKARTWORKTT Studio, Port of Spain, Trinidad, Museum of the Americas, Arlington VA, King Tisdell Cottage Black History Museum, Savannah, GA, the University of Alabama, Huntsville Al, Duke University, Durham NC, Pinnacle Gallery SCAD, Savannah, GA. Jepson Center for the Arts, Savannah GA, and the African American Cultural Center, Charlotte, NC. His work has been published in Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, Journal of Africana Studies, Al-Tiba9 Contemporary Art, and Seadly, New Art International.
Gordon Dahlquist is a playwright and novelist. His plays include TOMORROW COME TODAY (2015 James Tait Black Award for Drama), RED CHARIOT, WAKE, TEA PARTY, MESSALINA, DELIRIUM PALACE, and STELLA, a radio play for KCRW. His first novel, The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, was a NY Times bestseller. Other novels include The Dark Volume, The Chemickal Marriage, and The Different Girl. He is a NYTW Usual Suspect and a former member of New Dramatists. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, he now lives in Brooklyn.
image credit: DL
Gemma Ruiz Palà is a Catalan writer, whose novels give voice to women excluded from the mainstream male-centered histories. Her debut, Argelagues (Gorse), about working-class women in her hometown’s textile factories during the Spanish Civil War, became a literary phenomenon in Catalonia. Ca la Wenling (Wenling’s) follows a Chinese manicurist in Barcelona striving for a better future for her children. Her latest novel, Les nostres mares (Our Mothers), portrays ten women born in 1950s fascist Spain. That book won Catalonia’s most prestigious literary prize, the first woman in nineteen years to do so. Her work has been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, and English, and she has been invited to festivals worldwide and held literary residencies in Venice and New York.
image credit: Jordi Bernabé
Katherine Miller (born 2001) is an interdisciplinary artist, art educator, and art restorer. She holds her Bachelors in Fine Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and has exhibited across Washington DC, Baltimore City, Miami, and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. She is currently based in Dallas, Texas working in Art Restoration.
Miller’s practice employs iterative processes of weaving, printmaking and natural dye to explore our relationship to the natural world through the material and ephemeral. Influenced by signs and symbols of ecology and the occult, Miller’s practice poses craft as a tool for spiritual resilience and as a means of entry to eclipsed systems and connections. Her work invites the viewer to consider the shapes and colors of the sacred present in our everyday lives, and draw us closer to it.
CJ Hauser is a multi-genre, Genderqueer writer who splits time between rural Central New York and Brooklyn. Their memoir, The Crane Wife is published by Doubleday in the US and Viking in the UK.
They are also the author of two novels: Family of Origin (Doubleday 2019) and The From-Aways (William Morrow 2014). Some places their work has appeared include: Tin House, Narrative Magazine, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, Esquire, Third Coast, The Kenyon Review, The Guardian, Bon Appetit, Elle Magazine UK, Vogue UK, and The New York Times.
They hold an MFA from Brooklyn College and a PhD from Florida State University.
They have been happily teaching in the English & Creative Writing department at Colgate University since 2016.
Angelica Clyman is a multidisciplinary artist who resides in her hometown of Hollywood, Florida. Through painting, sculpture, installation, printmaking, and words, her practice centers around the history of ordinary places and the memories they hold. Her current works are inspired by her South Florida roots, responding to an environment that has experienced dramatic change in a short period of time. This series shows various locations existing at once as both past and present, honoring the life cycles of these unique and almost-forgotten places. Her solo exhibitions include Things Look Bright All Over (South Gallery), Nearer the Sun (BaCA West Gallery) and Land of Sunshine (Miami Paper and Printing Museum). Angelica has participated in residencies at Bailey Contemporary Arts Center and Oolite Arts. She is a South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellow, a recipient of the Broward County Artist Support Grant, and her work is in the permanent collection of the Miami Children’s Museum. Angelica is a graduate of Florida International University (MFA) and New World School of the Arts (BFA). She served as director of the Rosemary Duffy Larson Gallery for over a decade and currently teaches studio art at Broward College.
Jennifer Richter has published three award-winning poetry collections in the past fifteen years. Her first, Threshold, was a national bestseller chosen for publication by former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey; both Threshold and Richter’s second collection, No Acute Distress, were Oregon Book Award Finalists; her third, Dear Future, won the Tenth Gate Prize for Midcareer Poets.
Richter was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and, subsequently, a Jones Lectureship in Poetry from Stanford University; she earned her MFA in Poetry at Penn State. A Chicago native, she is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Oregon State University and has been teaching in their MFA Program for fourteen years.
Carolyn Monastra’s work is driven by a deep-rooted connection to the natural world and a long-standing passion for visual storytelling that can engender socio-environmental change. She uses photography, video, sound, and community-engagement workshops to address environmental concerns and examine human’s relationship with our ecosystems. Her current climate project, “Divergence of Birds”, uses a conceptual approach to ask: What would our world be like without the presence and sound of birds?
Awards include grants from the Puffin Foundation and BRIC Arts Media, along with residencies at Ucross, Djerassi, StudioWorks, Blue Mountain Center, and NYC Bird Alliance, among others. Carolyn has given dozens of presentations and workshops to a wide variety of audiences to create discourse and action on environmental issues. Her artwork is in the Marguiles, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and Johnson & Johnson collections and has been exhibited in venues in the United States, China, Ireland, and England. Originally from Cleveland, OH, Carolyn has lived in Brooklyn, NY for over 25 years. She works wherever birds are found.
Maxim Loskutoff is the award-winning author of books, stories, and essays about the contemporary West. His debut collection of stories COME WEST AND SEE won the High Plains Book Award, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and an NPR and Amazon Best Book of the Year. “A new kind of American western.” (NPR) His debut novel RUTHIE FEAR won the Montana Innovation Award and the High Plains Book Award, received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, and Booklist, and was a Reading the West Award Finalist. “Astonishing…a magnificent novel.” (Bookreporter) His second novel OLD KING was named a Best Book of Summer by the Boston Globe and Minneapolis Star Tribune, and a Best Book of the Year by NPR and Publisher’s Weekly. “Loskutoff is unmatched at evoking the contentious, transitional nature of the American West.” (Wall Street Journal) A former Visiting Writer at the University of Montana and the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell, his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Ploughshares, GQ, and many other magazines. He lives in the Rocky Mountains of western Montana where he was raised.
Charles Mary Kubricht is a visual artist and set designer in New York and Marfa. Her artwork has been viewed on the High Line in New York City, in numerous one-person museum exhibitions, one-person gallery exhibitions, permanent public art installations, on opera stages and in major publications. Major institutional one-person exhibitions include “Where Time Dwells”, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; “Canyon Series”, Galveston Arts Center, Galveston, TX; “Scanning the Grand Canyon” Austin Museum of Art; and “Charles Mary Kubricht, Matrix Series”, Art Museum of South Texas. Kubricht’s art installations include “Alive-nesses:Proposal for Adaptation” High Line, New York; “paraMuseum: Environmental Exigencies” Rice University, Houston, TX; and “Landscapes Near and Far”, U. S. Port of Entry, Columbus, NM. She was awarded a GSA Art in Architecture Award, Creating a Living Legacy Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation (New York) and DiverseWorks (Houston, TX), residencies at the Core Program of the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, and Yaddo, Saratoga, NY. Her work is in the collection of museums such as Museum of Fine Art, Houston, TX; Blanton Museum, Austin, TX; Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX; University of Houston, Houston, TX; El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX. Her opera set designs include Kurt Weill’s “Der Protagonist” and Christoph Willibald Gluck’s “L’arbre enchanté” and Georges Bizet’s “Carmen”. Recent exhibitions and events include Marfa Invitational (May, 2025), Galerie ArtBox, LIC, NY (July 2025), set design for Ana Sokolović’s opera Svedba, Portland, ME (July 2025). Her artwork has been featured in CULTUREVOLT, BOMB, ELLE DÉCOR Italy, Marfa: Transformation of a West Texas Town, Dazzle: Disguise and Disruption in War and Art and P61VMAG.
Brian Schaefer is a California-raised, New York-based novelist and journalist. His debut novel, TOWN & COUNTRY, was published in November by Simon & Schuster. He contributes regularly to The New York Times and has written for The New Yorker, New York magazine, Bloomberg/Businessweek, Haaretz, Dance Magazine and more. He is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Arts Journalism, a finalist for the Livingston Award for International Reporting, and a longtime scholar-in-residence at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. He holds a degree in dance from the University of California, San Diego and earned his master’s degree in creative writing from Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv. @itsBrianSchaefer
Pianist May Phang enjoys discovering and performing a wide range of repertoire, striving to deeply understand and bring fresh insights into the masterpieces of past composers while being equally committed to discovering and championing the works of today’s living composers. Her debut CD Travels through Time featured works centered around Mark Twain’s satirical A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Fanfare Magazine reviewed her recent recording of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations (Centaur Records, 2021) as “outstanding…a fresh and illuminating look at a famous masterpiece”.
Performances as soloist and chamber musician have taken her to venues such as the Goethe Institute in Bangkok, Tianjin Conservatory Concert Hall in China, Victoria Concert Hall in Singapore, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington DC, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Detroit Institute of Art, and to festivals such as the Singapore Festival of Arts, the Montreal International Piano Festival, the Karol Szymanowski Festival in Zakopane, Poland, and the Festival de Música de Cámara de Aguascalientes, Mexico. Solo performances with orchestras include the Banff Chamber Players, Singapore Symphony, Montreal Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
May Phang is Professor of Piano at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana and teaches at Interharmony Music Festival Italy in the summers.
ARTIST SERGIO BARADAT DESIGNS TRAVEL THE WORLD
By Barbara Nessim
Sergio Baradat is a Cuban-born, New York–based multidisciplinary artist, and designer renowned for his distinctive blend of classical aesthetics with modern sensibilities. He served as an Art Director for the United Nations Postal Administration (UNPA) within the Office of Global Graphics and Communications.
Raised in Miami after immigrating from Havana, Baradat’s early exposure to the city’s iconic Art Deco architecture deeply influenced his artistic style. He draws inspiration from early 20th-century artists like Brancusi, Arp, Gris, Dupas, and Erté. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design in New York City.
Baradat’s prolific career includes designing over 100 postage stamps for both the United Nations and the United States Postal Service. His work often addresses global themes such as human rights, mental health, biodiversity, and cultural heritage. Notable projects include the UN’s “Free & Equal” campaign promoting LGBTQ+ equality and commemorative stamps for the 150th anniversary of the Universal Postal Union.
His art has been featured in prestigious publications like Vogue and GQ and has been exhibited at institutions including the Cooper Hewitt Museum of Design in New York, the Smithsonian’s Postal Museum in Washington, D.C., and The White House. Baradat’s work is also included in the permanent collections of the Cooper Hewitt Museum, the Smithsonian Postal Museum, and the Cuban Heritage Collection in Miami.
Baradat’s diverse portfolio encompasses illustration, printmaking, collage, and photography. His creations are characterized by bold forms, rich colors, and a fusion of historical and contemporary design elements. He describes his approach as combining the roles of anthropologist, futurist, strategist, and designer to produce layered, thought-provoking work.
Today you can find Sergio at the helm of his busy design studio. He and his designers are working on many high profile projects.
For more information or to view his portfolio, visit his official website at baradat.com.
Candace Wiley is co-founding director of The Watering Hole Poetry Org., a nonprofit that creates Harlem Renaissance-style spaces in the contemporary South, and she often writes in the mode of Afrofuturism and has been a Vermont Studio Center Fellow, Callaloo Fellow and a Fulbright Fellow. Her work has been featured in Furious Flower: Seeding the Future…, Kenyon Review, Wild Gods Anthology, Killing the Negative Table Book, and Best American Poetry 2015, among others. She left a teaching position at Clemson University to build her own real estate portfolio. www.candacegwiley.com
image credit: Mingsheng He (2024)
Charles Spitzack is a Pacific Northwest visual artist specializing in woodcut printmaking, a medium he uses to explore both personal experience and broader societal themes. He discovered printmaking at Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis, later studying at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. His work is represented by Mesh Art Gallery, printed by Pomegranate communications, and has been exhibited at leading regional museums. In 2024, he received the “Kobaien Prize” at the International Mokuhanga Conference in Japan. Beyond his studio practice, he is a carpenter, arts educator, and President of Seattle Print Arts, supporting printmakers across the region.
Roxana Saberi is an independent journalist, writer and piano composer. She has reported internationally on breaking news, features, global affairs and in-depth investigations. For several years, Roxana was a correspondent for CBS News, reporting from Europe, the Middle East and the United States. Previously, she created and led a human rights and social justice beat for Al Jazeera America, and from 2003 to 2009, she lived and reported in Iran.
In 2009, she was wrongfully imprisoned in Tehran’s Evin Prison. Following an international campaign for her release, she published the book Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran and became an advocate for press freedom and human rights.
Raised in Fargo, ND, Roxana holds degrees from Concordia College, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and the University of Cambridge.
There is a long-standing tradition, from duck decoys to totem poles, of crafting wooden sculptures inspired by nature. Spencer Tinkham creates nature-inspired wood sculptures using primitive tools like a box cutter, hacksaw, and wood rasps. He combs databases of natural history museums for specimens with fascinating individual narratives. Tinkham then visits these natural history museums to collect photo reference of specific specimens, which inspire his sculptures. The ecological fates of flora, fauna and humans are intertwined. Tinkham shares specific stories of amphibians, birds, insects, plants and reptiles as a witness to natural and unnatural change. Their fragile beauty and unsung voices become magnified so as not to be missed by the careless eye.
Most recently, Tinkham was awarded the Marilyn Newmark Memorial Grant by the National Sculpture Society (New York, NY) and voted an Elected Member. He was selected as a David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation Wildlife Artist of the Year 2023 finalist (London, UK.) “Colaptes auratus auratus” was juried into the prestigious Leigh Yawkey Woodson (Wausau, WI) “Birds in Art 2022” museum exhibition and acquired for the museum collection. His work was recently featured in Hi-Fructose. Tinkham’s art is in the collections of Dollar Tree, Inc. (Chesapeake, VA,) Florence Griswold Museum (Old Lyme, CT,) The Fralin Museum of Art (Charlottesville, VA,) Top Trumps USA, Inc. (Providence, RI,) and U.S. Energy Development Corporation (Ft. Worth, TX.) To learn more, visit www.SpencerTinkhamArt.com or @Spencer.Tinkham.Art
Lydi Conklin has received a Stegner Fellowship, four Pushcart Prizes, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a Creative Writing Fulbright in Poland, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, Emory, Hedgebrook, Djerassi, the James Merrill House, Lighthouse Works, and elsewhere. Their fiction has appeared in <The Paris Review, One Story, McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, and VQR. They have drawn cartoons for The New Yorker and Narrative Magazine, and graphic fiction for The Believer, Lenny Letter, and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. They’ve served as the Helen Zell Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan and are now an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Vanderbilt University. Their story collection, Rainbow Rainbow, was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award and The Story Prize. Their novel, Songs of No Provenance, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
Kelley Bell is an artist, designer, and educator from Baltimore, MD. Whether in an intimate gallery setting or on a grand scale through projection mapping works, her projects have delighted audiences at the American Visionary Arts Museum, Artscape, The Transmodern Arts Festival, the Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival, and Light City. She has exhibited further afield at the MoCa Lights Festival in Long Island, New York, Digital Graffiti in Alys Beach, Florida, the Dlectricity festival in Detroit, Michigan and as far away as Animafest Zagreb in Croatia, and the INTERSECCIÓN Festival Internacional in A Coruña, Spain. Kelley holds a MFA in Imaging and Digital Arts from University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and is an Associate Professor in UMBC’s Department of Visual Arts.
Pioneer Winter (b. 1987; he/they) is a choreographer, dancer, and artistic director based in Miami. Winter creates intergenerational, queer, and physically integrated dance-theater rooted in community, care, and social change. Their work challenges dominant notions of beauty and belonging, while expanding what dance is and who it’s for.
Winter is the founder of Pioneer Winter Collective (PWC), a platform that supports artists living at the intersection of dance, identity, and public health. Through PWC’s performances, workshops, and artist development programs, he creates space for queer, elder, disabled, and system-impacted artists to be seen as essential culture-bearers. Pioneer’s choreographic work blends movement, text, and film, with 2025 projects including Apollo and In the Belly of the Bird/Godmother.
Winter holds an MFA in Choreography and a MPH in Epidemiology. He was named in Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” and received awards from Creative Capital, New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network, MAP Fund, and the Mellon Foundation. Pioneer has directed and curated the ScreenDance Miami Festival since 2017, and mentors artists across the country.
images: Pioneer Winter photographed by Chantal Lawrie (2025); Pioneer Winter Collective, Apollo, photo by Passion Ward (2025).
Sophie Ward is an actor and writer from North London. Her non-fiction book, A Marriage Proposal, was published by The Guardian in 2014. Sophie has a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London, in literature and philosophy. Her first novel, Love And Other Thought Experiments was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Her second novel, The Schoolhouse, was shortlisted for the Polari Prize. Sophie’s third novel, Our Better Natures, will be published in 2026.
Donna Oblongata is a critically-acclaimed performer, social practice artist, and award-winning writer. Her work has been described as, “big, bold, and endlessly impressive” (Baltimore City Paper) and “weird and wonderful” (The Art Newspaper). She has performed at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Ars Nova (NY), Edinburgh Fringe, and shared the stage with Mikhail Baryshnikov in Slava’s Snow Show. She has been supported by a MacDowell Fellowship, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Leeway Foundation, among others. Her protest art in support of Gaza was acquired by the Jewish Museum in Washington D.C. in 2024. She has toured her own work extensively throughout North America, Europe and New Zealand for almost two decades.
images: headshot photo credit to Kenzi Crash, “Van Gogh Shogh” photo credit to Josh Yoder
Daniel Callahan is an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist. Merging a plethora of mediums including motion picture, sound, painting, photography and performance Daniel seeks to create immersive experiences incorporating story, ritual and the human form to explore aspects of resilience and mysticism. Best known for his painterly technique of “MassQing”, Daniel is also writer, director & star of the feature length film “Come On In”, writer & star of the theatrical one-man-show “Come On In – Live” and co-founding producer of The MassQ Ball – a city-wide community arts and cultural event. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design where he received the Fine Arts Chair Award, and Emerson College, where he received an MFA in film and video through a Graduate Dean’s Fellowship, Daniel is a recipient of the Donor Circle for the Arts award, the NEFA Creative City Grant, the prestigious Brother Thomas Fellowship from the Boston Foundation and The Transformative Public Art Grant from the City of Boston. He and his work have been featured in the Museum of Fine Arts, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Queens Museum, The New Orleans Museum of Art and publications such as The Boston Globe, The Bay State Banner, WBUR, The Smithsonian Press, and Words Beats & Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.
Cephra Stuart is an award-winning writer, director, and producer. Her work has been recognized at HollyShorts, CineStory, the Austin Film Festival, and the LA International Screenplay Awards. Last year she directed and produced her debut feature film, “San Francisco Bae”, which screened at several festivals including Micheaux, African American Women in Cinema and the Winter Film Awards.
Her storytelling blends emotional truth, psychological insight, and cultural commentary, exploring themes of reinvention, belonging, and ambition. Whether on set or in development, she creates layered, character-driven stories that entertain while sparking conversation and transformation.
Before transitioning into filmmaking full time, Cephra worked at The Walt Disney Studios, Twitter and Bumble, where she advised executives on strategy, culture, and representation. She was also part of the founding team at Mansa, a streaming platform amplifying underrepresented voices.
More: cephrastuart.com
Shohei Katayama is a Japanese American artist and Assistant Professor in Studio Art at the Kentucky College of Art + Design (KyCAD). His practice explores the intersections of nature, technology, and scientific forces. Through line drawings, sculptures, and installations, he examines liminal spaces where opposites meet, including light and dark, life and death, beauty and danger, while tracing interconnectedness, material phenomena, and ecological patterns. Influenced by physics, ecology, and grief, Katayama reveals hidden relationships within natural systems as his materials evolve and adapt, embodying transformation and entanglement.
Katayama received his MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2019. His honors include the inaugural MTV: REDEFINE award, the International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award, the Frank-Ratchye Fund for Art at the Frontier Award, and recognition as a finalist for the 21C Artadia Award, among others. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at Palazzo Mora in Venice, Italy; 5 Manhattan West in New York; Plaxall Gallery in Long Island City; and the Littman Gallery in Portland, Oregon.
>His residencies include the NARS International Residency in Brooklyn, the Mattress Factory International Residency, Facebook’s Artist-in-Residence Program, the Arctic Circle Residency in Svalbard, the Labverde Amazon Residency in Manaus, Brazil, the International Sculpture Center Residency at Grounds For Sculpture in New Jersey, the Tough Art Residency in Pittsburgh, and the Asia Institute Crane House in Louisville.
Natali Hopkins is an emerging embroidery and textile artist whose work transforms buildings and landscapes into narrative, story-rich environments. The daughter of an architect and an educator, she grew up attuned to both structural detail and the power of storytelling. Hopkins’ embroidery has exhibited at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and awarded at the Orange County and Los Angeles County Fairs recognizing her excellence in needlework.
Her work is informed by her background as a filmmaker – for which she has received an Honoree Webby in 2017 and awarded at the Idyllwild Film Festival – and her years supporting under-represented filmmakers running the Innovative Programs department at the American Film Institute. Her work carries a cinematic sense of visual storytelling.
She lives and works in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, where she is expanding her series of embroidered dioramas.
Jami Attenberg is the New York Times bestselling author of ten books, including The Middlesteins, All Grown Up, the recently published A Reason to See You Again, and a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home. She is also the creator of the annual online group writing accountability project #1000wordsofsummer, which inspired the USA Today bestseller 1000 Words:A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round. Jami has also written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Guardian, and others. Her work has been published in sixteen languages.
Chris Stedman is a writer, podcaster, and professor who teaches in the department of religion and philosophy at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, MN. He is the author of the books IRL (2020), Faitheist (2012), and the forthcoming Nothing in Particular. Chris is also the creator, writer, and host of Unread, named one of the best podcasts of 2021 by the Guardian, Vulture, HuffPost, the CBC, and others, and honored by the 2022 Webby Awards under Podcasts – Best Writing. He is the founder of Good Judy Productions, a podcast studio based in Minneapolis. The studio’s first series, which has received funding support from the Minnesota State Arts Board and Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, is currently in production and will be distributed by iHeartPodcasts. In addition to his books and podcasts, Chris has written for outlets including the Atlantic, Pitchfork, BuzzFeed Reader, VICE, the Washington Post, the Rumpus, LitHub, Catapult, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and others.
In 2025, Chris served as Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University and Scholar-in-Residence at Susquehanna University, and was awarded residencies at the New York Mills Cultural Center, Everwood Farmstead Foundation, Write On, Door County, and The Studios of Key West. Previously the founding director of the Yale Humanist Community and a fellow at Yale University, he also served as a humanist chaplain and fellow at Harvard University. In 2018, Augsburg University selected Chris for their annual First Decade Award, which recognizes alumni “who have made significant progress in their professional achievements and contributions to the community” ten years after graduating. In his free time, Chris serves on the board of PFund, a community foundation providing direct financial assistance to LGBTQIA midwesterners, and as the fundraising coordinator for Drop Deadlift Gorgeous, an annual powerlifting event that raises money for transgender midwesterners. In 2024, he was selected for the Moxie Award and the Augsburg Pride Award, both in recognition of his LGBTQIA fundraising and mutual aid advocacy.
Christopher Shinn is a playwright and screenwriter who lives in Brooklyn. Several of his plays have premiered at the Royal Court: Four, Other People, Where Do We Live (Obie Award), Dying City (Pulitzer Prize finalist) and Now or Later (shortlisted for the Evening Standard Theatre Award).
Other plays include The Narcissist (Chichester Festival Theatre), Against (Almeida Theatre), Teddy Ferrara (Goodman Theatre and Donmar Warehouse), An Opening in Time (Hartford Stage), Picked (Vineyard Theatre), On the Mountain (South Coast Rep), What Didn’t Happen (Playwrights Horizons), and The Coming World (Soho Theatre).
His adaptation of Hedda Gabler premiered on Broadway in 2009 and his adaptation of Judgment Day premiered at Park Avenue Armory in 2019 and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award.
In film and TV, he has sold and developed projects with HBO, MRC, Fremantle, and Paramount. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2005, a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard in 2019-2020, a Cullman Fellow at New York Public Library in 2020-2021, a MacDowell Fellow in 2023, and a Hawthornden Fellow in 2024.
Linda Rui Feng is a two-time MacDowell Fellow for fiction, and the author of the novel Swimming Back to Trout River, which traces the far-flung orbits of a family across two continents, and explores the themes of music and migration in the aftermath of one of China’s most tumultuous eras in the twentieth century. She is a faculty member in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto, where her research takes her to long-forgotten books from the ninth century and, more recently, to the history of scent and aromatics.
Symin (sigh-mean) Adive makes sad/fun art. She is an artist and comedian (The Onion, Upright Citizens Brigade) as well as an art director/glorified graphic designer with clients like The Empire State Building. Symin is brown, bi, and a third word that starts with “B.”
The Bangladeshi artist resides in NYC and abroad. She has received grants from NYFA (City Artist Corps), Queens Council on the Arts and the Norwegian Parliament.
Her work combines hurt and humor. It both overshares and sugarcoats. She uses her background in comedy and design to make the unpalatable palatable via multiple mediums (film, interactive, 2d, 3d). In her work, all the absurd and familiar ways in which we relate are of key importance especially if it’s hilariously sad and sadly, hilarious.
Her recent projects focus on community (or lack thereof) and creating fun-ish, interactive and thought provoking make-shift “third places” antithetical to the clinical walls of the art gallery. Adive specializes in making playful environments for people to contemplate otherwise darker subject matter like CPTSD, baseless hierarchies and lost childhoods.
Symin likes to think her current website looks better than the one she made when she was 11. Take a gander at: https://SyminAdive.com
Sandra is an interdisciplinary artist who works across a broad range of practices, including cut paper, painting, murals, community art, and social practice. Her work has been exhibited at SOFA New York, Ann Nathan Gallery in Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art in St. Louis, Missouri, The Studios of Key West in Key West, Florida, and National Amazon University in Puerto Maldonado, Peru. Her work is included in the Howard Tullman Collection, The Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon, Seattle Tacoma International Airport, and several private collections. She was awarded artist residencies at The Studios of Key West, Florida; Rogers Art Loft in Las Vegas, Nevada; Arquetopia, Puebla, Mexico; the Contemporary Crafts Museum in Portland, Oregon; and with the Amazon Conservation Association in Madre de Dios, Peru. Recognition for her work includes a Mayor’s Art Award, thirteen Parents Association Awards for Contributions to Students, a Hixson Lied Award for Senior Faculty Achievement in Research and Creative Activity, a Hixson-Lied Curriculum Development Award, and two Hixson-Lied Awards for Outreach, Engagement, and Service. She is a CoPI on the transdisciplinary Grand Challenge grant RISE With Insects. Sandra is the Visual Arts Chair for the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association.
Her most recent work contains variations on the theme of ecotone, the area where two communities meet and integrate. Traditionally, the term refers to ecological communities, such as the zone where the plains and desert meet the rainforest and the biodiversity that occurs there. Yet it can also refer to the zone where “nature” and “culture” intersect—where the city meets the preexisting natural environment and the tension resulting from this intersection. It may also refer to a metaphorical overlapping of narrative and place.
Additional work includes social practice projects emphasizing creative facilitation, community needs, and restorative justice.
Sara Fruner is a bilingual poet and novelist born in Riva del Garda, Trentino, North-Eastern Italy. She graduated in English literature and language from Ca’ Foscari University in Venice and earned two MPhils in literary translation. Her translations include works by Dionne Brand, Monique Truong, Sello Duiker, Raj Rao, Don McKay, and others. She has worked as a translator in the publishing industry and served at the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles in 2007. Sara later worked as a Senior Publication Coordinator in Trento and taught English as a foreign language at Istituto Accademico Interpreti e Traduttori di Trento and the University of Trento.
In 2016, she moved to New York City, where she currently teaches Italian at New York University and the Fashion Institute of Technology. She contributes to bilingual newsmagazine La Voce di New York and collaborates with the Center for Italian Modern Art and Magazzino Italian Art. Her poetry has appeared in journals like Graphie and Italian Poetry, and her books include Bitter Bites from Sugar Hills (2018), Lucciole in palmo alla notte (2019), and La rossa goletta (2024). Sara’s debut novel L’istante largo (2020) was shortlisted for the Severino Cesari National Award for Debut Novel, and she released La notte del bene in 2022. Her upcoming novel will be released in May 2025. Sara has participated in numerous residency programs worldwide, including The Studios of Key West and The Bogliasco Foundation.
Tipper Newton is an actor, filmmaker, and musician living in Los Angeles. Her recent short film, Wild Card, played festivals worldwide and received a Special Jury Award for Best Midnight Short at Palm Springs ShortFest. Her short film The Dangerous Type took home the 2021 “Best Shorts With Legs” prize at Fantastic Fest and premiered online as a Vimeo staff pick. As an actor, Tipper has had recurring roles on The Mindy Project and The Guest Book. When she’s not busy working in film and television you can find her being the frontwoman for her powerpop band Color TV. https://vimeo.com/tippernewton
Rick Worth is a force of nature—talented, generous, and endlessly inventive. Since arriving in Key West in 1986 with just $18 in his pocket, he’s transformed the island into his canvas. From painting clunkers into joyful “moving murals” to leading community art projects, Rick brings creativity and color to everything he touches.
He’s exhibited at Lucky Street, JAG, and Harrison Gallery, and even opened his own space, Three-Legged Dog Gallery, named for his spirited pup, Kiddo. Beyond the canvas, Rick has supported countless local initiatives, from teaching with MARC House to leading community murals with over 100 kids. Whether he’s leading painting bootcamp, building floats, or belting karaoke at Bobby’s, Rick infuses Key West with joy. His work reminds us that art isn’t just something to admire—it’s something to live, share, and celebrate. Rick has painted more than walls; he’s helped color the spirit of this island. (photo by Johnny White)
Dr. MaryLouise Patterson is a retired general pediatrician living in NYC. She is also a mother of 3 and a grandmother of 4.
Her parents, Louise and William Patterson, were Leftist civil rights activists their entire lives. They represented the best in the Black Radical tradition. They instilled in her a profound love and pride of Black people and to the need to uphold their culture, history and noble struggle for freedom and unbridled inclusion.
She received her medical degree from Patrice Lumumba Friendship University in Moscow, USSR and a Masters, Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley.
She is the co-author of “Letters from Langston: From the Red Scare to the Harlem Renaissance and Beyond”. UC Press 2016.
She loves jazz, plays, art exhibits, dancing – despite not getting enough of it anymore, socializing and cooking for friends and family, discussing politics, reading, traveling plus just living.
She is committed to and active in the push for universal health care-Medicare for All, to ending institutionalized racism in medicine, to increasing the number of Black, Latinx, Native American Indian and women health providers and to Peace with Justice everywhere.
Dr. Royel M. Johnson is one of the nation’s leading voices on diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education. A tenured professor in the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California, Johnson also serves as chair of the school’s PhD program. He is the Director of the National Assessment of Collegiate Campus Climates in the USC Race and Equity Center, which is the nation’s leading tool for assessing campus racial climate. Johnson is the author and editor of five books and over 60 academic papers and chapters. His recent books include The Big Lie About Race in America’s Schools (Harvard Education Press) and From Foster Care to College: Navigating Educational Challenges and Creating Possibilities (Teachers College Press). Additionally, Johnson serves as Co-Editor of Educational Researcher, the flagship journal for the field of education. The Los Angeles Times recently named Dr. Johnson a DEIA Visionary, recognizing his efforts to propel positive change across the country.
Dr. Sonia Mae Brown is currently an Associate Professor of Language and Letters and the Chair of the Division of Arts and Humanities at Philander Smith University. Dr. Brown received her doctoral degree in English from Howard University and she also possesses a Masters in English with a focus in Creative and Professional Writing from Long Island University. Her areas of research are gender and sexuality, black female sexuality, and sex as a discursive act or practice.
As a self-proclaimed “Eroticist” or “Literary Sexual Anthropologist, Dr. Brown is dedicated to enriching the current scholarship on The Erotic and exploring the potential for eroticism to be seen as a critical lens of textual inquiry. According to Dr. Brown, “reading is an erotic pursuit, and those who engage in the process of reading are engaging in an intimate activity.” Dr. Brown is passionate about bringing discussions of the erotic into the academy and into the classroom. She is currently working on a monograph about sadomasochism in James Baldwin’s literature.
Christine Fifer’s boundless energy and optimism mobilized a core group of volunteers to clear homes and properties in the Lower Keys of debris from Hurricane Irma. Working through grueling heat and dangerous conditions, they brought hope to many and directed their energies particularly to getting fellow artists back on their feet. Christine is a painter, costume artist, and former Studio Artist at The Studios of Key West. She has most recently exhibited in the Sanger Gallery in January 2021.
Gary Teplitsky and Olga Manosalvas are the owners of Baby’s Coffee on Big Pine Key. Despite significant damage to their own business, they opened their doors shortly after Hurricane Irma and made their entire inventory free to all. Baby’s quickly became a lifeline and a rallying point for residents – a vital distribution point for supplies, hot meals and other services donated from all over the Keys and beyond. Olga is an accomplished painter and sculptor who has exhibited at The Studios of Key West.
Along with her colleague Layla Barr, Margit Bisztray spearheaded a group of volunteers cooking and delivering hundreds upon hundreds of fresh, healthy meals to residents of the Lower Keys who were faced with rebuilding their homes and businesses due to Hurricane Irma. An entirely grass roots effort, Nourishing the Lower Keys quickly attracted a dedicated corps of volunteers and over $28,000 of contributions through a GoFundme campaign to continue buying groceries. Margit is a writer, chef and journalist.
Emma J Starr is one of the island’s most beloved artists. Over the spring and summer she had the inspiration to mobilize a group of artists to create new works on roofing tiles that she’d collected, and sell them through a pair of auctions called “Under One Roof.” The work was prominently displayed in a Duval Street storefront window thanks to landlord Ken Silverman, and the auctions were a rousing success, with virtually every piece sold, with 100% of the proceeds going back into the community. All told, Under One Roof raised $10,000 for the participating artists, and roughly $8,500 each to the Sister Season Fund and the Florida Keys Council of the Arts’ Audubon House Artists’ Fund, resulting in 17 grants to Monroe County artists who were financially impacted by the pandemic.
Gary Marion is better known as Sushi, the world-famous drag queen who lights up the stage at 801 Bourbon, and is dropped from a shoe every New Year’s on Duval Street. As a performer, Gary immediately realized the pandemic posed an existential threat to Key West’s vibrant drag community, and took action. With formidable sewing skills honed in backstage dressing rooms and costume studios, he rallied a team of “his girls” to begin sewing and selling face masks to help make ends meet. Some 10,000 masks later, and after appearances on NBC, CNN and other national media, Gary has become not just a symbol of the importance of masks to keeping us all healthy, and of the singular plight of working performers, but of Key West’s resilience and ingenuity.
Brad Lutz is a commercial lender for First State Bank of the Florida Keys, so perhaps not the first person you might think would receive an award from an arts organization. But Brad was also the bank’s point person for the federal Paycheck Protection Program, and as such found himself a calming presence at the center of a storm of anxiety and uncertainty in the pandemic’s early days. A lending and grant program for small businesses and independent contractors, the PPP had limited funds, and was first come first serve, so from the outset there was a clear sense of urgency. Brad understood that the economic survival of the roughly 1,000 businesses he was helping, including dozens of the island’s arts nonprofits and artist-entrepreneurs, depended on him.
From 2007 until her recent retirement in 2022, Lauren McAloon served as the gallery and facilities manager of The Studios of Key West. The title is deceptively simple, as any title would be, for all the passion, joy, and commitment she brought to the position.
Lauren brings patience, selflessness, and a keen attention to detail to everything she does. But most of all, she helps us understand we all have an artist inside us and that
The Studios is a place that everyone can call home. She is extraordinary service personified. And for that reason The Studios of Key West is so pleased to present Lauren McAloon with The 2023 Studios Hero Award.
Stanley and Judith Zabar are native New Yorkers who now snowbird and spend their winters on Sugarloaf Key. Both are artists and art-lovers and are involved in numerous charitable organizations in Key West and New York. Stanley is Vice-President and house counsel for Zabar’s & Co. Inc located at the upper west-side of Manhattan.
image credit: Johnny White
Bill and Ann Lorraine have been a part of the creative fabric of Key West since 1975. Ann Lorraine’s paintings and drawings have been exhibited in all over the world. Her first Key West one-woman show was at East Martello Museum in 1975, and her show “Window Wonderlands & Fantasy Floats – 23 years of legendary floats, windows and exotic creations.” was a hit of The Studios of Key West’s exhibition season in 2012. She is well-known in Key West for her award-winning Fantasy Fest costumes and giant animated floats and for her work as window designer for Fast Buck Freddie’s department store on Duval Street.
Bill Lorraine arrived in Key West has been involved in the Key West arts community as a musician and composer, writer and sculptor. His music compositions have been performed by the Key West Symphony Orchestra, the Old Havana Symphony Orchestra and the Keys Chorale. Bill was editor and publisher of a quarterly art magazine, “The Key West Arts Review” in the 1980s. He was assistant managing editor for the Key West Citizen newspaper for 2 years. He worked as a freelance writer for many Keys newspapers and magazines. As a stone sculptor, Bill uses the old cornerstones from the Victorian-style houses in Key West. The stone is called Miami Oolite, an indigenous stone from south Florida. Bill’s sculptures can be seen at the sculpture garden at the East Martello Museum, at the West Martello Fort, home of the Key West Garden Club, and in his studio on Catherine Street.
image credit: Johnny White
Anne McKee has been a leader in charitable activities benefiting the local arts for over forty years. She states that her main concern is the individual artist. In the mid-1990s, with this target in mind, Anne founded the Anne McKee Artists Fund. Anne and the Fund are still going strong, having raised over a quarter million dollars to give in grants to support local artists. The Studios of Key West is proud to host the annual Anne McKee auction, where aficionados bid on contemporary and classic works to raise proceeds which help fund the vital grant program for Keys artists.
image credit: Anne McKee Artists Fund
A leader and force for social consciousness in this community, and a founding board member of the Anne McKee Artists Fund as well as The Studios of Key West, John Martini moved to Key West nearly forty years ago. As one of the original artists who had studio space in Truman Annex, Martini was a pioneer of the early art scene on the island. He opened Lucky Street Gallery at its original location on Margaret Street in the early 80s, and began representing local artists, curating work from around the country, and introducing “outsider art” to Key West. Eventually, he purchased and refurbished the iconic movie theater on Emma Street where he still works today.
image credit: Johnny White
Judy Blume is one of America’s most beloved authors and one of its most vigilant and committed anti-censorship activists. She has been a funny and knowing voice for children and adolescents for nearly five decades. Blume’s books have sold more than 85 million copies in 32 languages. She works with National Coalition Against Censorship to support teachers and librarians committed to keeping all books accessible.
Cooper, a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Harvard Law School and member of the Law Review, was a professor of Taxation and Civil Rights Law at Columbia University for 20 years. Active in civil rights policy and litigation in the 1960s and 1970s, and editor of textbooks on Equal Employment and Poverty Law, he spent 1979 in South Africa where he helped establish the Legal Resources Centre, an anti-apartheid legal aid program. Also a successful writer, Cooper focused on historic true crime.
Closer to home, Blume and Cooper are at the center of philanthropic life in Key West. Cooper, an independent film enthusiast, was the driving force behind the development of the nonprofit Tropic Cinema which Florida Monthly has named “Best Florida Cinema.”
Blume’s passion for books led her to become a board member of Key West Literary Seminar, a nonprofit organization that supports young writers, librarians and teachers. In 2016, she and Cooper opened Books & Books @ The Studios, a full service, nonprofit bookstore in an Old Town arts complex. Enhancing Key West’s rich literary heritage, Books & Books hosts readings, promotes local authors and encourages children to love reading. Blume and Cooper can be found most days working at the bustling bookstore.
image credit: Rob O’Neal
Though Christopher Peterson is perhaps best known for his live show “Eyecons” which he’s performed at La-Te-Da since 2001, he is also a passionate advocate for community causes. His charitable efforts as a comedian, impersonator and master of ceremonies have benefitted many organizations over the past two decades including AIDS Help, Equality Florida, Special Olympics, Key West Business Guild, The Studios of Key West, Queen Mother Pageant, Royal Coronation and many others. He is tireless in his devotion to Key West and its motto of “One Human Family.” Peterson’s Key West roots run deep. He arrived in Key West in 1998 with his husband of 37 years, the late James Mill. His extraordinary talents were recognized immediately, and he has become a local legend as one of the foremost female impersonators who sing “live.” He’s known for his masterful characterizations of Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Joan Rivers, Reba McEntire, Bette Midler, Tina Turner, Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland, Cher, Bette Davis, Lucille Ball, Lady GaGa and others. In addition, his skills as a costume designer and fabricator are unparalleled, manifesting in both his stage performances and charitable work. He is featured in the award-winning documentary “We’re Funny That Way,” which detailed the first gay and lesbian comedy festival in Canada and was later released on Showtime, Cinemax and HBO.
image credit: Johnny White
Lynn Kaufelt, a third generation Japanese American, was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. After marrying novelist David A. Kaufelt and giving birth to their son, Jackson, the family divided their time between Manhattan, Sag Harbor, Long Island, and Key West. Her love for the Keys is unmistakable from her tireless work and support for Monroe County arts and service organizations.
Ben and Helen Harrison have served as advocates and mentors to countless artists, writers, and musicians. In fact, over the past 35 years, Harrison Gallery has represented 172 artists and is widely recognized for the eclectic contemporary works exhibited inside its walls.
The Studios of Key West is grateful to Helen and Ben for all they’ve contributed to our community, helping to grow and preserve Key West’s reputation as an island of the arts.
We couldn’t be happier to announce Rosi Ware as the recipient of the 2024 Golden Mango Award! We can’t think of anyone who has been as active in the community as Rosi Ware has. She was Chair or President of the Key West Garden Club for over 20 years, worked tirelessly with the MARC House, an organization for physically and mentally challenged adults, and she was the first President of The Studios of Key West, overseeing the exponential growth those early years from small island art center to the thriving hub we are today. And to add even more, she has been a board member on the Community Foundation of the Florida Keys, an active advisor for Arts in Public Places, and a member of the personal advisory team to Mayor Teri Johnston. No wonder she was honored with “Humanitarian of the Year” in 2013 by the Red Cross. (photo by Mark Hedden)
For all the big wonderful ways that Tony Falcone has contributed to the community (Fast Buck Freddie’s, Fantasy Fest, saving the Strand sign, preserving the historic Key West Bight), he’s helped in a thousand quiet ways too. From supporting and encouraging artists to promoting a seemingly endless spirit of fun, from dedicating his time to community groups to working for a brighter future for the island while sustaining the things that count, Tony has been a fierce advocate for Key West. Passionate. Generous. Creative. And a whole lot of fun. There couldn’t be a person more deserving of the 2023 Golden Mango Award than Tony Falcone.
William Kwamena-Poh is a native of Ghana, West Africa. He came to the United States in the early 1980’s and has resided in Alabama, Washington DC, Chicago, IL and has called Savannah, GA home since 1995. William is a self taught artist who paints with gouache, also known as opaque watercolor; the same medium used by the late, great African American artist, Jacob Lawrence and also experimented with by Dali, Picasso, and Klimt. According to Ralph Mayer’s Artist Handbook, “gouache paints are opaque and have (or should have) a total hiding power, and because they do not become progressively transparent with age as oil have a tendency to do…gouache has a brilliant light-reflecting quality of a different and distinct nature; it lies in the paint surface itself; its whiteness or brightness comes from the use of white pigments.”
This density and opacity of gouache allows William to capture and give the viewer a small window into his beautiful and wonder-filled homeland. “The sun’s strength is ever present, providing a colorful environment which is strongly reflected in Ghana culture and clothing,” says William. On his visits home he takes lots of photographs of places he grew up in and then sketches them freehand onto tracing paper so that he can best portray the natural and original feel of the scenes. He then transfers the sketched and corrected images onto heavier watercolor paper which permits him to implement numerous lifts and scrubbing to achieve the desired textures and emotional qualities of the scene.
William is internationally known for his series images of Women, Fisherman, Children and Market Scenes. His work is collected by private and well-known public figures throughout the United States and abroad (i.e., Academy Award winning Actor and Director, Forrest Whitaker; Actress, Angela Bassett; NBA Star, Tim Hardaway, just to name a few). Corporate collections include: Prudential, DuSable Museum, Disney Corp., Amoco Corp., Ford Motors, BET and Luster Products. Donated works include an original exclusively created and donated for auction to the Health and Educational Relief Organization (H.E.R.O.) for their 2014 annual fundraising gala in NY.
William’s father was a notable history professor who spent most of his teaching career at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana. He came to the U.S. in the early 1980’s as a Fulbright Scholar and taught African history at Talladega College. He brought young William with him, where he received his B.A. in Sociology. His father was aware of William’s budding artistic gift which was an inheritance from William’s grandfather, who was an art teacher. However, his father hoped William would follow in his footsteps sharing the history of his people…a wish William vehemently protested initially. But divine intervention saw his father’s wish, William’s protest and inherited gift through a slightly different lens. William walks in the footsteps of his ancestors and passionately shares the history of his people and homeland with his paint brush. This past February, during the week of William’s birthday he returned home for the ceremonial celebration of his father’s life and burial. While he was/is saddened by his father’s earthly departure, he found this trip home spiritually uplifting. He basked in the reminiscing of his father with family, friends, colleagues and town folk who paid such moving tributes that are forever etched in his heart. But also on this trip home, William celebrated his birthday and the life of his father, the man who had the great foresight to bring him to the U.S. for the opportunity to embrace, cultivate and share his gift of art with the masses.
Vern Thiessen is one of Canada’s most produced playwrights. His plays have been seen across Canada, the UK, United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia and been translated in five languages. His works include The Divners, Of Human Bondage, Vimy, Einstein’s Gift (GG winner), Lenin’s Embalmers (GG finalist), Apple, and Shakespeare’s Will. He has been produced off-Broadway five times. Vern is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Dora and Sterling awards for Outstanding New Play, The Carol Bolt Award, the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award, the City of Edmonton Arts Achievement Award, the University of Alberta Alumni Award of Excellence, The Canadian Jewish Playwriting Competition, and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, Canada’s highest honour for a playwright. He was also a finalist for the Siminovich Prize in Playwriting. Vern received his B.A. from the University of Winnipeg and an M.F.A. from the University of Alberta. He has srvedas president of both the Playwrights Guild of Canada and the Writers Guild of Alberta. For six years he served as Artistic Director of Workshop West Playwrights Theatre, one of Canada’s leading new play companies. He is married to acclaimed screenwriter and novelist Susie Moloney. www.vernthiessen.com
Sandra Jackson-Opoku is the author of the award-winning novel, The River Where Blood is Born and Hot Johnny and the Women Who Loved Him, an Essence Magazine Bestseller in Hardcover Fiction. Her fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic works are widely published and produced, appearing in Midnight & Indigo, Aunt Chloe, Another Chicago Magazine, New Daughters of Africa, Adi Magazine, Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, Adi Magazine, About Place Journal, the Chicago Humanities Festival, Lifeline Theatre, and others. She also coedited the anthology, Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks.
Professional recognition includes a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the American Library Association Black Caucus Award, the Chicago Esteemed Artist Award, a Lifeline Theatre BIPOC Adaptation Showcase, the Globe Soup Story Award, the Plentitudes Journal Prize, a Circle of Confusion Writers Discovery Fellowship, the Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and the Casa África Purorrelato Prize. She placed as a quarterfinalist in the Stage 32 Springboard Diversity Screenwriting Competition and Roadmap Writers Short Story Competition.
Sandra Jackson-Opoku taught literature and writing at the University of Miami, Columbia College Chicago, and Chicago State University. She presents workshops, readings, and literary events worldwide.
Rachel de Cuba is an interdisciplinary artist raised in Sebastian, FL. She received her BFA in Studio Art from Flagler College in 2013 and her MFA in Digital Art from Indiana University in 2019. She received recognition for her thesis work with Grant awards from Indiana University. In 2019 she was invited to create new media artworks for the New Orleans Film Festival with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation. Her mixed media work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, as well as selected for publication in New American Paintings Southern 2022 Edition. Her work has been selected for Skyway 2024: A Contemporary Collaboration with an invitation to exhibit at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. Rachel de Cuba is currently an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Glenn Weiss is a public art critic, producer and artist currently studying the impact of architects, designers and digital fabricators on the world of public art. He has managed public art programs in Times Square, Seattle and Florida including Broward County and Jacksonville and wrote several public art master plans including Miami Beach. He served as an architecture critic for Seattle Magazine, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and ARCADE and blogged on public art for ArtsJournal.com. Special projects include the Delray Beach Cultural Loop with Rick Lowe, the Boynton Beach Kinetic Biennial, the Sealevel Rise Rauschenberg Residency, the Times Square Valentine Heart, Competition Diomede with Union of Soviet Architects, Adam’s House in Paradise and Homeless at Home. He professionally began in NYC as the co-director/curator for the Storefront for Art and Architecture and the curator for architecture at PS1 (now PS1/MoMA) after securing a Master of Architecture at Columbia University. He lives with his wife Maria Foladori Weiss in Delray Beach, Florida and teaches architecture theory at Florida Atlantic University. More details available at www.glennweiss.com and photography on instagram at @glennweiss
Mirena Suarez is a Cuban-born multimedia artist. She received her Bachelor in Arts degree with a minor in Printmaking from the Higher Institute of Arts in Havana. She moved to the United States and furthered her studies at Florida International University and NOVA Southeastern University. Her work reflects on the atemporal universal issues of identity, connection, and change. Through a variety of media that includes mainly tile mosaic, printmaking, drawing and photography, the artist explores philosophical questions associated with the concepts of loss, memory, conception, survival, fragility, perception of time, social relationships and dynamics, and emotional communication as originators of a visual dialogue that expresses the thoughts, worries, perceptions, and the constant internal fights that she experiences. This standpoint goes beyond being auto-referential and becomes a personal expression of the universal query that rules the dynamics inherent to modern life. Mirena has extensively exhibited her work around the world, and has been awarded numerous prizes and recognitions for her artwork. She currently works as a Visual Arts teacher for Miami-Dade County Public Schools. She lives and works in Miami, FL.
Karin Lin-Greenberg’s first story collection, Faulty Predictions, won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and her second story collection, Vanished, won the Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prize. Her novel You Are Here was published by Counterpoint Press in 2023 and was an Indie Next pick from the American Booksellers Association. She’s received a Pushcart Prize and her stories have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, New England Review, The Southern Review, Story, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at Siena College in upstate New York and also teaches fiction in Carlow University’s low-residency MFA program.
Ruth Jeyaveeran uses textiles to examine a shared history of alienation and dissociation. In her soft sculptures and fiber-based installations, the boundaries between human, animal, and flora dissolve to tell a story of isolation, migration, and evolution.
Jeyaveeran’s first solo show, Soft Remains, was exhibited at Field Projects in 2023. Other notable exhibitions include Felt Experience at the Brattleboro Museum and Communion, a solo installation at Main Window Dumbo. Her work has been featured at Smack Mellon, ABC No Rio, Westbeth Gallery, The Yard, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, The Border Project, and Bronx Art Space, among others.
Jeyaveeran has been awarded residencies from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Residency Unlimited, Lighthouse Works, Marble House Project, Jentel Foundation, Willapa Bay, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, La Napoule Art Foundation, and PADA Studios. She is an Associate Professor of Textile Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Nya Patrinos centers her art on giving voice to the voiceless, telling the stories of people and places that have been forgotten or left unexplored, and reinterpreting religious texts, myths, and folktales through a modern lens. As an artist and surface designer, Nya explores the realms of spirituality and identity, as well as cultural intersections. History, memory, light, wind, climate, temperature, the moon, and stars all form the tapestry of her artistry, weaving together to chronicle a cohesive story. Nya received an Emmy nomination in Art Direction/Set Decoration for the TV series Transparent. Website: www.nyapatrinos.com
Morgan Hill is a sculptor and jewelry designer whose work draws on a wide range of aesthetic and conceptual influences from 90’s pop culture, campy cinema, and costume design to her Southern, Christian upbringing and experiences as the only female child in an extended family of farmers in Arkansas. Her longing to break the silence surrounding culturally censured topics drives her to create work on themes of illness, abuse, depression, and suicide, as well as their counterparts of rebirth, healing, and empowerment. On the lighter side, her jewelry brand Bad Habits by Morgan Hill celebrates the pleasure of excess and indulged desires.
Morgan’s formal art education began at the Memphis College of Art where she focused on drawing. She also studied interior design and ultimately earned a BFA in Woodworking and Furniture Design from the University of Arkansas Little Rock. She was a Core Fellow at the Penland School of Craft from 2015-2017 where she worked with renowned artists and designers and studied techniques ranging from chainsaw carving to metalwork to neon tube bending. In 2018, she was an ITE Windgate Fellow at the Center for Art in Wood, and in 2022, she was awarded the Chrysalis Award by the James Renwick Alliance. Her work is carried in galleries across the US and internationally. She creates her work at Treats Studios in Spruce Pine, NC, a studio cooperative she co-founded.
Joy Castro is the award-winning author of the 2023 historical novel One Brilliant Flame, set amidst the nineteenth-century anticolonial Cuban insurgent community in Key West; Flight Risk, a finalist for a 2022 International Thriller Award; the post-Katrina New Orleans literary thrillers Hell or High Water, which received the Nebraska Book Award, and Nearer Home, which have both been published in France by Gallimard’s historic Série Noire; the story collection How Winter Began; the memoir The Truth Book; and the essay collection Island of Bones, which received the International Latino Book Award. She is also the editor of the craft anthology Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family and the founding series editor of Machete, a series in innovative literary nonfiction at The Ohio State University Press. Her work has appeared in venues including Ploughshares, The Brooklyn Rail, Senses of Cinema, Salon, Gulf Coast, Brevity, Afro-Hispanic Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The New York Times Magazine. A former Writer-in-Residence at Vanderbilt University, she is currently the Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies (Latinx Studies) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she directs the Institute for Ethnic Studies. With translator and co-editor Rhi Johnson, she edited the bilingual edition of the 1918 poetry collection Lágrimas y flores by Feliciano Castro, forthcoming in October, 2024 from the University Press of Florida.
Barbara Boissevain is a California based contemporary visual artist and photographer whose work focuses on the impact of human activity on the environment. Nature’s ability to regenerate and reclaim human altered landscapes is a central theme in her work.
Boissevain was born in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in Silicon Valley. She studied painting at Parsons School of Design in New York before immersing herself in photography, earning a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from San Jose State University.
Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, including Mémoire De L’Avenir, Paris; the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA; Galerie Numero Cinq, Arles, France; and the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland. From 2014 to 2021, she was an artist in residence with the City of Palo Alto’s Cubberley Artist Studio Program. In 2018 she was an artist in residence at Galerie Huit in Arles, France. She was invited to Atelier 11 for a solo residency through L’AiR Arts international residency program in Paris in July 2022. In the Summer of 2023 she was honored to participate in the Cycladic Arts Residency in Paros Greece.
In 2009 Boissevain published her first book, titled Children of the Rainbow, which documented the humanitarian challenges facing Quechua communities in Peru due to climate change. In 2021 her work was featured on NPR’s “The Picture Show” in conjunction with the UN Climate Change Summit in Glasgow, Scotland. She was also featured on the PBS News show Something Beautiful in 2022.
Her book “Salt of the Earth” was published by Kehrer Verlag in the Fall of 2023, and was chosen as one of Wired Magazine’s best photo books of 2023.
Boissevain’s photographs are in numerous public and private collections, including the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C.; the Google Corporate Art Collection, Sunnyvale, CA; and the De Pietri Artphilein Foundation, Lugano, Switzerland
R. Eric Thomas (he/him) is a national bestselling author, playwright, and screenwriter. His books include, Here for It, or How to Save Your Soul in America, which was featured as a Read with Jenna pick on NBC’s Today, the YA novel Kings of B’more, a 2023 American Library Association Stonewall Honor book, and Congratulations, the Best Is Over!, an instant USA Today Bestseller. He also writes the daily, nationally syndicated advice column “Asking Eric.” For his playwriting, Eric has won the Barrymore Award for Best New Play, the Dramatist Guild Lanford Wilson Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and was a finalist for the O’Neill Conference and the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award. On screen, he wrote for the Peabody Award-winning series Dickinson on AppleTV+ and Better Things on FX and is currently developing multiple film and television projects, including a half hour comedy based on his memoir. Off the page, Eric is also the long-running host of The Moth StorySlams in Philadelphia, and has been heard multiple times on The Moth Radio Hour. Website: rericthomas.com
Lisa Morehouse is an award-winning public radio reporter and editor. Her series California Foodways is a county-by-county exploration of stories at the intersection of food, culture, history, economics, labor and the environment. The stories air on KQED’s The California Report Magazine, national shows, and on the California Foodways podcast. The series received a national Edward R. Murrow Award and four James Beard nominations, and Morehouse was named a fellow for the UC Berkeley-11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship, and Les Dames d’Escoffier San Francisco Karola Saekel Craib Excellence In Food Journalism Fellowship.
Morehouse is the Senior Editor for KALW Public Radio’s news magazine, Crosscurrents, where she helps train new audio journalists. Her first career was in public education, teaching middle school in rural Georgia, building an educational non-profit in Arizona, and spending a decade teaching high school in San Francisco.
Lee Jensen is a Danish textile artist. Lee grew up in Copenhagen, Denmark, and now lives and works in Queens, New York. She holds a BFA degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Lee Jensen creates contemporary abstract quilts and hand-sewn stretched textile pieces. Her work is influenced by her urban environment and by a life-long connection to sewing and textiles.
Jensen is the recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA)/Queens Art Fund 2024 New Work Grant. In 2023-24 she was awarded participation in NYFA’s Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program. Her work has been featured in Hyperallergic and Queens Chronicle.
Christopher Castellani has published five books, most of which center on the Italian, Italian-American, and/or queer experience. His most recent novel is Leading Men, for which he received Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Leading Men was published in February 2019 by Viking Penguin, and is currently being adapted for film by Peter Spears (Oscar-winning producer of Nomadland) and acclaimed Italian director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name).
The Art of Perspective: Who Tells the Story, a collection of essays on point of view in fiction, was published in 2016 by Graywolf Press, and is taught in many creative writing workshops.
His first novel, A Kiss from Maddalena (Algonquin, 2003) won the Massachusetts Book Award in 2004; its follow-up, The Saint of Lost Things (Algonquin, 2005), was a BookSense (IndieBound) Notable Book; the final novel in the trilogy, All This Talk of Love (Algonquin, 2013), was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Literary Award.
Christopher is currently on the faculty and academic board of the Warren Wilson MFA program and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Since 2019, he has chaired the Writing Panel at YoungArts, aka the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. For nearly twenty years, Christopher was in executive leadership at GrubStreet, where he founded the Muse and the Marketplace national literary conference and led the development of numerous artistic programs for adults, teens, and seniors.
The son of Italian immigrants and a native of Wilmington, DE, Christopher was educated at Swarthmore College, received his Masters in English Literature from Tufts University, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Boston University. He lives in Boston and Provincetown, MA, where he is completing his fifth novel with the support of a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Andrew Shaffer is the New York Times bestselling author of Hope Never Dies: An Obama Biden Mystery, the children’s picture book Mothman’s Merry Cryptid Christmas (which he also illustrated), and over two dozen other books in multiple genres, including mystery, horror, and humor. He is a five-time Goodreads Choice Award nominee and a two-time finalist in the Humor category. His most recent book is the fully illustrated Literary Cats Coloring Book, featuring feline versions of famous authors from “Jane Pawsten” to “Furnest Hemingway.” An Iowa native and frequent visitor to the Keys, Shaffer lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, novelist Meg Shaffer.
Nancy Andrews makes films, drawings, music, books and objects. Andrews is a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in filmmaking. The Museum of Modern Art has collected six of her films, and her work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Franklin Furnace Archives. Her first feature film, The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes, premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2015. This project was then developed as a web series when it was one of ten projects chosen to participate in Independent Film Project’s (IFP) Screen Forward Labs and subsequently, The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes web series (YouTube) won the 2017 Gotham Award for Breakout Series (short).
The Museum of Modern Art, Pacific Film Archive, Anthology Film Archives, Flaherty Seminars, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Film on the Rocks- Thailand, and others have presented her work. Her work was featured in the 2013 deCordova Biennial and Portland Museum of Art Biennial and a solo show at Maine’s Center for Contemporary Art (2023).
She is a participant in Artists in Context’s “Artists’ Prospectus for the Nation” in the category of health, where she and other artists are bringing their aesthetic modes of inquiry to real-world situations. Andrews is on faculty at College of the Atlantic.
artist photo by Corrine de Korver
Kat Ryals (b. 1988 in Jonesboro, AR) is an artist, entrepreneur, curator and photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her mixed media artworks blend photography, craft & sculpture processes, textile materials, and found object assemblage. Ryals received a BFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA in Visual Art & an Adv. Certificate in Museum Education from Brooklyn College. She has shown her work nationally, including recent two person shows at Elijah Wheat Showroom and Ortega Y Gasset Projects, in group exhibitions with NADA, The Every Woman Biennial, ChaShaMa, Ortega Y Gasset Projects, and The Wassaic Project, and in solo booths at SPRING/BREAK Art Show. Her first solo exhibition will take place at 550 Gallery in 2025. Ryals was a 2024 artist-in-residence at the Museum of Arts & Design in NYC and has also attended residencies and fellowships at The Wassaic Project, ChaNorth, The Peter Bullough Foundation, and the Vermont Studio Center. She is a 2022 Joseph Robert Foundation grant recipient, and has been featured in The New York Times, White Hot Magazine, artnet, Forbes, and Hyperallergic.
artist photo by Tiffany Smith
Andrew Russell is a writer and director who often creates new work for theatre often inspired by real-life events, including Stu for Silverton (Intiman Theatre); John Baxter is a Switch Hitter (Intiman Theatre); Full Gallop (The Old Globe); and Sara Porkalob’s The Dragon Cycle, featuring Dragon Lady (Intiman Theatre, American Repertory Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, The Geffen Playhouse), Dragon Mama (American Repertory Theatre, Diversionary Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival), and Dragon Baby. As Producing Artistic Director of the Tony Award–winning Intiman Theatre in Seattle from 2011-2017, Andrew played a critical role in reorganizing and reopening the theater after its closure in 2011. He is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. @heyheyandyk & www.andrew-russell.com
artist photo by JJ Geiger
Rehman’s first novel, Corona, was chosen by the NY Public Library as one of its favorite books about NYC. She’s co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism and author of the collection poetry Marianna’s Beauty Salon. Her new novel, Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion, is a modern classic about what it means to be Muslim and queer from a Pakistani-American community in Queens. Roses was noted as a Best Book and Editor’s Choice by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, People Magazine, Good Morning America, Ms. Magazine and more.
artist photo by Andrea Dobrich
Dylan Mabika is a 23 year old passionate hyperrealism artist on a journey of self-discovery and expression. Despite having no academic background in art, he has dedicated himself to creating art that resonates with the heart and speaks to the soul. For Dylan, art provides peace to his soul and mind unlike anything else, and it has become his passion.
Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Dylan has always been drawn to art, evident from his early days in primary school where he started and loved drawing. At the age of 16, he decided to take his art seriously after being inspired by an older student who refused to share his skills and knowledge. This sparked Dylan’s determination to teach himself to draw, marking the beginning of his artistic journey.
In 2017, Dylan created his first drawing of a human face, and in 2018, he passed his O’ level with 7 subjects. Due to financial constraints, he couldn’t attend an art school or a high school with art as a subject, so he refined his drawing skills on his own. In 2019, Dylan entered his first art competition and won a gold medal for coming first place in his age group in a national competition, also being announced as the best overall in the art category.
Since then, Dylan has experimented with various mediums like charcoal pencils, watercolor pencils, colour pencils and pastel color pencils and he is eager to learn more. He dropped out of school in 2019 to focus on art and support his family financially. Dylan’s life experiences and his aspirations inspire him to create art that provides a space for reflection and imagination, where each viewer can find a piece of themselves reflected back.
Dylan hopes to own a gallery with a spacious studio equipped with art materials and a positive atmosphere, where he can work as an artist and photographer. He also aims to give back to the less privileged artists in schools like his, providing them with art materials and knowledge. Dylan believes that art has the power to heal, inspire, and transform, offering solace and hope in times of uncertainty and despair.
Deborah Zlotsky received a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship and NYFA Artist Fellowships in Painting in 2012 and 2018. Her work is in a variety of public, private and corporate collections in the US and abroad and she has been awarded recent residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, the Bogliasco Foundation, Two Coats of Paint, and the Bemis Center. Zlotsky is represented by Markel Fine Arts and McKenzie Fine Art, both in New York, Robischon Gallery in Denver, and Sandler Hudson Gallery in Atlanta. She has a BA in art history from Yale University and an MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Connecticut. She teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and lives in the Hudson Valley.
Allyson Morgan is an award-winning writer, producer, and performer. Allyson’s first short film Need For Speed (Dating) premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, while her next short, Sitting, won “Outstanding Narrative Short” at Tallgrass Film Festival. First Date, her short film produced by 20th Digital Studio, is currently airing on Hulu in their “Bite Size Halloween” series. Allyson adapted First Date into a feature film for Hulu, titled Jagged Mind, which the LA Times called “edgy” and “powerful.” Her newest short, The Ghost, which also serves as her directorial debut, made its world premiere at the RiverRun International Film Festival in 2024. She has also been selected for the New York Stage and Film Filmmakers’ Workshop, been awarded “Best Teleplay” at Omaha Film Festival, twice been a top ten Finalist for Cinequest, a Finalist at Stowe Story Labs, and a Semi-Finalist at Austin Film Festival. Additionally, she has been awarded an Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Commission, a Djerassi Artist Residency (California), an NG Art Creative Residency (France), a Monson Arts Residency (Maine), a Vashon Artist Residency (Washington), a Wassaic Project “Haunted Mill” residency (NY), and multiple Juno Leadership Residencies through the Omega Institute (NY). Allyson has two novels, Don’t Want To Remember You and The Perfect Place, currently available through Tapas Media. She is represented for literary by Heroes and Villains Entertainment. More: allysonm.com
Monica Lopez De Victoria (b. 1980, Gainesville, FL, USA) is a multi-disciplinary artist and performer in Artistic Synchronized Swimming. For the past 20 years Monica has woven these two art forms together. Her colorful geometric aquatic videos, performances, and textiles investigate emotional volume in space and movement in the 4 dimensions.
Monica’s art work has been featured in international exhibitions such as “Uncertain States of America: American Art in the 3rd Millennium” curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Daniel Birnbaum, and Gunnar B. Kvaran, the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, and PERFORMA in NYC by Roselee Goldberg. Her work has been seen and written about in L’Officiel magazine, The Guardian, STEP Inside Design, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Vogue Italia, and on the cover of ARTnews magazine.
Monica’s artwork also is a part of permanent collections of the Van Abbe Museum in the Netherlands and the Perez Art Museum Miami as well as other public and private collections. Monica has participated in residencies in Canada, New Zealand, Mexico, and the USA and has recently been supported by the Bauhaus Foundation for residency projects in Germany and South Korea.
artist photo by Thomas Meyer
Brittany Reeber is a writer and director living in NYC whose work spans narrative, music video, documentary and commercial mediums. Originally from the Sunshine State, she has inherited an affection for oddball characters and humid climates. Her work reflects the humor, tenderness, and spirit found in the lesser known corners of America — sometimes, there’s a choreographed dance sequence.
She has received grants and residencies from American Documentary, Kodak, The Austin Film Society, Caldera Arts, Cucalorus, The Bend Film Festival, The Studios of Key West, among others. Her most recent film, STUCK, an existential stoner comedy, just finished a successful run on the film festival circuit after premiering at the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival in 2023, and her feature script, SALT SPRINGS, a Florida climate dramedy, is currently in development.
Her music videos have appeared in Pitchfork, Rolling Stone Magazine, NPR and Billboard Magazine. In 2023, she directed NYC comedian Fareeha Khan’s solo show I ACTUALLY DON’T FEEL THAT GOOD to sold out audiences. While at The Studios of Key West, she’ll continue to explore the ways in which the Florida landscape, culture and environmental conflicts, play a vital role in her work.
John Graham’s ever-diversifying visual art practice includes printmaking, artist’s books, painting, drawing, installations, and digital imaging. This artwork has been widely exhibited in North America, Europe and Asia. John is also the writer, producer, director and editor of 10 short films that have been screened at over 220 venues in over 40 countries. Many of these arthouse films have won awards or received nominations for awards. STILL HERE / IMMERDAR (2024) is his 10th short film that poetically explores the theme of dying beautifully.
Andrée B. Carter was born and raised in New Orleans. She also lived in Seattle and Los Angeles, but now resides full-time in Palm Desert. Andrée received an MFA from The University of New Orleans and a BS from Loyola University in New Orleans (Cum Laude). She also studied art history in Florence, Italy through a Tulane University summer program.
In addition to numerous solo and group exhibitions, Andrée has been honored with painting fellowships from the Bau Institute held in Otranto, Italy; the Virginia Center for Creative Art, Amherst, VA; and the Ucross Foundation in Clearmont, WY. She is also a Kipaipai Fellow, a special program focusing on participants to build their professional network. Andrée’s latest residency was in November 2023 at the Cycladic Arts Residency on the Greek island of Paros.
Furthermore, Andrée has received several accolades, including the Artistic Selection Award from the Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA and the Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA. In 2022, she received a Jurors award from the Artist Council Exhibition in Palm Desert. Andrée was also honored to be one of 30 artists chosen for the Rancho Mirage Festival of the Arts, in November 2022.
Andrée’s was recently in an exhibition in Los Angeles at Gallery 825 called “Soul of a City.” This group exhibition of Swiss and American artists was also recently shown in Neuchatel, Switzerland. Andrée’s work is included in numerous private and public collections, most notably in the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA; Swedish Hospital, Seattle, WA; and the Iberia Bank, New Orleans and Shreveport, LA.
Faith Adiele is the author of four experimental chapbooks about her Nigerian-Nordic-American heritage and Meeting Faith, an award-winning account of becoming Thailand’s first Black Buddhist Nun that is widely taught in American universities. Her media credits include My Journey Home, a PBS documentary about finding her family, HBO-Max’s A World of Calm, and Sleep Stories for the Calm meditation app. Her essays appear in O: The Oprah Magazine, Essence, OkayAfrica, Smithsonian Folklife, and numerous anthologies. She founded the nation’s first writing workshop for travelers of color and African Book Club at San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora. Named one of Marie Claire magazine’s “Five Women to Learn From,” Adiele chairs the Writing & Literature Program at California College of the Arts and speaks and teaches around the world.
Franck Hodelin is an artist and interior designer from New York City . Straddling the boundary of realism and abstraction, his figurative oil paintings feature profoundly intimate portraits of men in an array of settings. In 2023, Hodelin was a recipient of the Warner Bros. Discovery 150 Grant. He also received grants from the New York City Artists Corps and a Queens Council on the Arts “New Works Grant” in 2020 to create a series of work that was featured in a solo show at Local Projects Gallery in Long Island City, NY.
Recent exhibitions include a 2-person show at the Chashama Gallery in New York City; the Long Island City Artists “Heritage” group show at Queens College; Greene County Council on the Arts “New Perspective: Selected Works of Artists From the African Diaspora.” Franck received a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. He currently lives and works in Sunnyside, NY.
image: “Sit and Reflect” (oil paint on wood panel, 40 x 60″)
A multi-faceted force, Sarah Dahnke is a choreographer, director and arts educator deeply committed to encouraging communities to use performance to reclaim narratives stripped away by colonialism. As a practitioner, Sarah specializes in devised performance for stage and screen. Sarah has also been a MAP Fund awardee, an NEA Our Town-funded resident artist, and an awardee of fellowships from Gibney’s Moving Toward Justice, Colt Coeur, Target Margin Institute, New Victory LabWorks, and Culture Push. She has received commissions from Little Island, PEN America and A Studio in the Woods and has been in residence at Abrons Arts Center and Brooklyn Studios for Dance. She was recently the Associate Director for the Off-Broadway play STILL. She was the 2022-23 Opera Columbus Directing Fellow and has gone on to direct opera productions of Carmen and Hydrogen Jukebox. Her dance film work has been screened through the Dance Films Association, Tiny Dance Film Festival, DanceBarn Collective, BRIC, and Movies By Movers. She is a graduate of ITP|NYU, where she specialized in studying the intersection of performance and technology.
Sarah is also the artistic director of Dances for Solidarity, a project that co-creates choreography with people affected by the criminal legal system and performs for public audiences as advocacy toward prison abolition. Learn more at sarahdahnke.com and dancesforsolidarity.com.
Kota Bowen is an interdisciplinary artist based in Milwaukee, Wi specializing in ceramic sculpture. With a printmaking degree from University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee they have a rich background in drawing, and other narrative forms. They have ten years experience working professionally in clay and freelancing as an illustrator. Much of their work is inspired by mythology and classical paintings with a contemporary graphic twist.
Josh Aronson (b. 1994, Toronto, Canada) is a photographer based in Miami. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Northwestern University. His work reclaims and redefines Southern manliness, presenting tender portrayals of young men against the backdrop of Florida’s landscapes. His photography emphasizes vulnerability, introspection, and emotional complexity, challenging dominant narratives of masculinity. Aronson’s visual storytelling is rooted in his own experiences growing up in Florida, where the natural environment and cultural history serve as constant inspirations.
J Wortham (they/them) is a sound healer, reiki practitioner, herbalist, and community care worker oriented towards healing justice and liberation. They are also a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, and co-host of the podcast ‘Still Processing,’ With Kimberly Drew, they co-edited Black Futures, a visual anthology and compendium of radical, imaginative, and provocative art by contemporary Black creators. J is also currently working on a book about the body and dissociation for Penguin Press. J mostly lives and works on stolen Munsee Lenape land, now known as Brooklyn, New York, and is committed to decolonization as a way of life.
Eric Pankey, who received his MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1983, is the author of seventeen collections of poems: For the New Year (Atheneum 1984), which was selected as the winner of the Walt Whitman Award by Mark Strand, Heartwood(Atheneum 1988), which was reissued by Orchises Press in 1998, Apocrypha (Alfred A. Knopf 1991), The Late Romances (Alfred A. Knopf 1997), Cenotaph (Alfred A. Knopf 2000), Oracle Figures (Ausable Press 2003), Reliquaries (Ausable Press 2005), The Pear as One Example: New and Selected Poems (Ausable Press 2008), Trace (Milkweed Editions 2013), Dismantling the Angel (Free Verse Editions 2013), which won the New Measures Prize, Crow-Work (Milkweed Editions 2015), Augury (Milkweed Editions 2017), Owl of Minerva (Milkweed Editions 2019), Alias: Prose Poems (Free Verse Editions 2020), Not Yet Transfigured (Orison Books 2021), The History of the Siege (Codhill Press 2024). A collection of essays, Vestiges: Notes, Responses, & Essays 1988-2018 appeared from Parlor Press in 2019.
His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared widely in such journals as The Iowa Review, The Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The Yale Review. His work has been supported by fellowships from John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Brown Foundation.
Ernest Gold is a successful writer and director, who has worked in the United States and Austrian film industries for over 15 years, specializing in creating outstanding genre movies and tv shows. His work includes character driven dramas, heartfelt comedies, as well as stunt and effect heavy action films. Ernest is the co-creator and writer of the first ever Austrian AMAZON PRIME VIDEO series “Beasts Like Us”, released in 2024. He’s the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, and alum of the prestigious NYU Tisch – School of the Arts and Filmacademy Vienna.
Address: 6810 Front Street, Key West, FL 33040
We’re located in Safe Harbor Marina on Stock Island, just down the docks from Hogfish Bar & Grill.
With original seating from its days as a Masonic temple, the Helmerich Theater has been updated to also include floor seating. As a black box theater, the set up is intimate but professional, and sets the stage for concerts and performances that leave guests feeling like they really got to know the performer.
Helmerich Theater offers:
—More space and comfortable chairs
—Indoor comforts
—Intimate experiences
—A walk-up counter bar that opens one hour prior to show time
With one of the tallest buildings – and most spectacular views – in town, the Hugh’s View rooftop terrace serves as The Studios’ creative space in the sky. The terrace sits four stories above street level and offers panoramic views of the island. The Kitwald Stage glows in the golden twilight of our sunset performances.
Hugh’s View offers:
—Smaller audience sizes
—Outdoor environment
—Intimate experiences
—A rooftop bar that opens one hour prior to show time
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