Monica Berra
Filmmaker, Producer
Miami, FL

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.

Jiayin Shen
Pianist
Great Neck, NY

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 founded Duo Kinetica in 2022. The Duo pushes the boundary of traditional art forms by their collaboration. Her upcoming residency at The Studio of Key West will include presentations of her solo performance, Duo Kinetica, 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
Author, Artist, Educator
Ithaca, 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. You can learn more about him at his website: https://peterfortunato.net

Eric Dyer
Animation Artist, Visual Turntablist
Baltimore, MD

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
Writer, Performance Scholar
Philadelphia, PA

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 Maubert
Artist, Architect, Professor
Homestead, FL

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
Artist
Los Angeles, CA

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.

Sofia Valiente
Artist, Visual Anthropologist
Miami, FL

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
Visual Artist, Print Media
Sarasota, FL

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
Painter
Atlanta, GA

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
Playwright, Novelist
Brooklyn, NY

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.

Gemma Ruiz Palà
Fiction Writer, Journalist
Barcelona, Spain

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.

Katherine Miller
interdisciplinary Artist, Educator
Baltimore, MD

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
Writer
Hamilton, NY

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
Multidisciplinary Artist
Hollywood, FL

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
Poet, Professor
Corvallis, OR

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
Artist, Activist, Educator
Brooklyn, NY

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
Writer
Missoula, MT

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
Visual Artist, Scenic Stage Designer
New York City, NY and Marfa, TX

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
Writer
New York, NY

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.

www.Brian-Schaefer.com

@itsBrianSchaefer

May Phang
Pianist, Musician, Educator
Greencastle, IN

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.  Learn more at www.mayphang.com

Sergio Baradat
Illustrator, Graphic Artist, Collagist, Photographer, Art Director
New York, NY

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
Poet, Writer
Greenville, SC

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

Charles Spitzack
Visual Artist, Woodcut Printmaker
Seattle, WA

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
Journalist, Writer, Composer
New York and Virginia

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.

Spencer Tinkham
Artist, Painter
Delmar, NY

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
Screenwriter, Filmmaker
New York, NY

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
Projectionist, Designer, Multimedia Maker
Baltimore, MD

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
Interdisciplinary Artist (Choreographer, Dancer, Educator, Filmmaker)
Miami, FL

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.

Photo credits: Pioneer Winter photographed by Chantal Lawrie (2025).

Sophie Ward
Writer, Actor
Naples, FL

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
Performer, Writer, Social Practice
Philadelphia, PA

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.

Daniel Callahan
Multidisciplinary Artist
Boston, MA

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
Writer, Director, Producer for Film & TV
Los Angeles, CA

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
Artist, Professor
Louisville, KY

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
Textile Artist, Filmmaker
Los Angeles, CA

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
Writer
New Orleans, LA

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
Writer, Podcaster, Professor
Minneapolis, MN

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 at 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
Writer, Podcaster, Artist, Historian
Brooklyn, NY

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
Writer, Cultural Historian
Toronto, Canada

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. Find out more at lindaruifeng.com.

Symin Adive
Mixed Media / Interactive Artist, Comedian
Queens, NY

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

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)

Watch a video about Rick here.

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.

Watch a video about Lauren here.

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.

Watch her acceptance speech here.

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.

Watch a video about the Harrisons here.

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)

Watch a video about Rosi here.

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.

Watch a video about Tony here.