Kresge Artist Fellowships

Katy Dresner is an award-winning filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist based in Detroit. Since 2014, Dresner has brought their non-linear, experimental storytelling style to a range of narrative and documentary short films, deftly navigating the roles of editor, director, art director, and production designer. Katy's film work has screened at numerous festivals and has been broadcasted nationwide on PBS, and their new media and video installation art has been exhibited worldwide. Dresner is a 2024 Kresge Artist Fellow.

Katy Dresner

Todd Johnson is a multifaceted Detroit-born promoter, writer, and marketing visionary. He co-created the comic “Tribe” with artist Larry Stroman—the bestselling African-American creator-owned title of all time, whose first issue sold over one million copies.

Johnson is also a founding partner and Director of marketing and promotion for Charivari Detroit, a house-and-techno festival (and event brand) that celebrates Detroit's underground DJ culture and champions diversity in electronic music.

Johnson is deeply rooted in Detroit nightlife and culture, currently serving as marketing head for the iconic TV Lounge, one of the city's historic club venues. He is often sought out for his marketing, writing, and graphic design input by others.

Known for his entrepreneurial grit, his story includes roles from DJ and doorman to graphic artist and promoter—with a steadfast commitment to community, representation, and creative legacy.

Angelo Madsen is a multi-disciplinary artist, filmmaker, and educator. His projects consider how human relationships are woven through personal and collective histories, cultures, and kinships, with specific attention to subcultural experience, phenomenology, and the politics of desire. Madsen's works have shown at Berlinale, Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Tribeca, De La Warr Pavilion, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, REDCAT, Museum of Moving Image, Anthology Film Archives, British Film Institute, and dozens of documentary, LGBT, and experimental film festivals around the world. He is a Creative Capital Fellow (2025), a United States Artists Fellow (2023), a Guggenheim Fellow (2022), and has participated in residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, Pioneer Works, Headlands, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, and others. His film, "North By Current" (2021), aired on season 34 of “POV” (PBS), was nominated for an Independent Spirit award, and won the Cinema Eye Honors Spotlight award, Best Writing award from the IDA as well as numerous festival jury prizes. Madsen is an associate professor of time-based media at the University of Vermont.

Dr. Jasmine "Jazzie" Pigott is a performer, composer, and educator known for expressive, narrative-driven artistry. A Meinl Weston Performing Artist, she tours internationally as a soloist and clinician, appears with her duo J² alongside euphoniumist Jermaine Fryer, and serves as the adjunct professor of tuba at Rowan University.
Her interdisciplinary work centers storytelling, identity, and expression through performance, composition, and writing. Dr. Pigott holds a B.M. from Ithaca College, a M.M. from Michigan State University, and a D.M.A. from the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University.

Janis Shen is a driving force for positive change in the music business, a staunch defender of artist rights, and a veteran industry leader dedicated to building sustainable creative careers and more equitable arts ecosystems. She is currently the CEO and co-founder of Wax Management, and she actively manages high profile artists around the globe. Shen is also of counsel at Covey Law and leads the Covey Arts & Entertainment division. Shen served on the board of the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE) and was the director of CAPE New York (CAPENY) for 10 years, where she worked to foster diversity and inclusion in the film and media industries. Her legal work in film and TV includes "The Phenomenon" and "Moment of Contact" with renowned documentarian James Fox. Before founding her own businesses in management and entertainment law, Shen held positions in business affairs at RCA, RCA Victor/Sony, and TVT Records. Shen holds a J.D. from New York University, where she was co-founder of the Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law Society, and received an Honors B.A. in literature and poetry from the University of Michigan.

Darryl Kent Clark, BA, Columbia College, MFA, SUNY College at Brockport, brings a total of over forty years' experience as a dancer, actor, choreographer, director, and teacher to his position as associate professor of musical theater dance at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His performance credits include stints with Princess Cruises, Sesame Street Live!, Zyngara Performance Troupe, and Concert Dance, Inc. He has played roles as diverse as Henry Brown in “Race,” Jacob in “La Cage aux Folles,” Mickey in “The Normal Heart,” Papa Ge in “Once on this Island,” Benvolio in “Romeo and Juliet,” and Caliban in “The Tempest.” His choreography runs the gamut from concert work for the New York City-based #TapLife Dance Company to dance entertainment for the Mike Ditka Foundation Benefits, produced by Clements, Brady and Associates. Recently, he has directed productions of “Dutchman,” “Rent,” “Falsettos,” “The Musical of Musicals,” “Ride The Cyclone,” and “The It Girl.”

Karilú Alarcón Forshee was raised in Juárez, México. She began her performing arts education at a young age at La Academia Municipal de Arte and has been performing ever since. Forshee is an interdisciplinary performing artist with a degree in theater arts and English-Spanish translation (University of Texas 2009). She has been a Detroit-based performer since 2011 and was recognized as a Kresge Arts Fellow in 2020. Her youth work in the metro Detroit area dates back to 2011. Her youth theater directing includes collaborations with Living Arts Detroit, University Musical Society, Matrix Theatre Company, Mosaic Youth Theatre, and the Detroit Opera. In 2019, supported by the Knight Foundation, she founded the Latiné bilingual youth program, La Carpa Theatre, which she currently directs under the umbrella of A Host of People (with whom she co-created and performed her last show Peregrina). Currently she leads the Bloomberg Arts Internship youth program at CultureSource.

Karilú Alarcón Forshee

William Hector is a Miami-born playwright, novelist, and the founder and artistic director of the Coconut Grove Theatre Festival—an annual festival of new play readings by South Florida creatives. Graduating from the University of Miami with dual degrees in politics, philosophy & economics as well as playwriting, Hector was one of four playwrights chosen to participate in Miami Dade county's Playwright Development Program. He was also awarded a Knight Foundation New Work Miami grant to write, produce, and stage “G7: 2070: An Immersive Theatrical Summit.” His past works have included “Unbound” at the Camino Real Playhouse in San Juan, Capistrano ShowOff! International Playwriting Festival, as well as performances of his plays “Sheol,” “Draco,” “The Monster with 21 Faces” and “The Kipling Backpack Thief” in collaboration with partners such as: The Playwrights Center, Meetinghouse Miami, and the MDC Department of Cultural Affairs. Hector has also worked on collaborative productions in partnership with fellow writers with The Deering Estate and WLRN.

Liz Joynt Sandberg is a comedy writer, performer, director, and educator based in Chicago. In addition to her work at DePaul University as an assistant professor and head of the comedy arts program, she also works as a lead learning designer and facilitator with Second City Works as well as in her own consultancy, teaching clients like Harvard Business School, BMW, BMO Harris, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Chicago Public Schools, Swing Left, Indivisible, and others to leverage an improvisational mindset to solve real-world problems.

Sandberg has toured nationally and internationally as a comedic performer and educator with The Second City, Hoopla London, Boom Chicago Amsterdam, iO, The Annoyance, The Revival, and others. She has also written for The Second City Network, The Hu​ffington Post, Rebellious Magazine, and Forbes. Sandberg currently sits on the comedic think tank, The Laughing Matters Council (Ruder Finn), and performs, directs, and produces with Beverly (iO Chicago), Baby Wine (Annoyance Theater), Phony Award-Winning Musical (iO Chicago), with her sketch comedy duo (Jeff Bouthiette and Liz Joynt Sandberg), and, most recently, NONE OF THIS MATTERS SO STEAL (Boom Chicago Amsterdam, Annoyance Chicago). She loves playing adult beginner tennis, and her family is thrilled that she is currently learning to play the drums.

Alex Trajano is a Gracie, Audie, and MAB award-winning audio producer. A panelist at Third Coast International Audio Festival, Podcast Movement, and guest lecturer at the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, his sound design work includes audiobook of the year, Project Hail Mary.

Musically, Trajano’s collaborations include New Music Detroit, Blue Dog, Thornetta Davis, Spectrum Brass Ensemble, and American Mars. As an engineer, he has recorded musicians such as Marcus Belgrave, Straight Ahead, Immigrant Suns, and Iggy Pop & The Stooges.

Trajano served as creative director of WDET, where his focus on audio storytelling featured area artists and led to the station's first podcast, “The Beginning of The End.” He has produced work for NPR, WBEZ Chicago, and WBUR Boston. He has interviewed composers, conductors, and soloists from around the world during his tenure as host of Detroit Symphony's “DSOLive.”

Michael Awkward, is the Gayl A. Jones Professor of Afro-American Literature and Culture, Emeritus, at the University of Michigan and the author or editor of seven books examining representations of race and gender in Black American expressive culture. Trained as a scholar of Black American literature, he's also taken up such varied subjects as Mike Tyson's rape trial, Michael Jackson's attitudes about race, Al Green's negotiations of the divide between sacred and secular life, the "nappy headed ‘ho’" controversy, the traumatic resonances of MLK's assassination, and his own complicated coming-of-age as a racialized and gendered subject. In retirement, he's writing a study of representations of the deaths of young Black American males following Emmett Till as well as a work of fiction.

Jeni De La O is a poet and storyteller living in Detroit. She is a 2021 Kresge Artist Fellow and creator of “The Brown Study.” Her debut collection, “SOFIAS,” is forthcoming in 2026.

Jeni De La O

Michelle Cruz Gonzales, author of “The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band,” was born in Los Angeles—the second largest Mexican city in the world—and she writes about the intersections of race, class, and gender. She has published in anthologies, literary journals such as The Los Angeles Review of Books, and online at Latino Rebels, Longreads, and Alta Journal. Gonzales holds a B.A. and an MFA in English/creative writing from Mills College. She is on the English faculty at Las Positas College, has two dogs, one son, and lives with her marido in Oakland, California.

Josh Malerman is the New York Times best selling author of “Bird Box” and “Incidents Around the House.” He's also one of two singer/songwriters for the Michigan band The High Strung, whose song “The Luck You Got” can be heard as the theme song to the Showtime show “Shameless.” He lives in Michigan with his fiancee, the artist, musician, and performer Allison Laakko, and their many brilliant pets.

Lev Mirov is a four-time Rhysling Award nominated poet, speculative author, historian, and interdisciplinary artist with a masters of fine arts in interdisciplinary arts from Goddard College, where Lev focused on dance, disability, and portal stories. Originally trained as a medievalist, now a doctoral candidate at Antioch University, Lev is writing a dissertation on the queer poetry of Anna Akhmatova. Lev lives in New Orleans with fellow writer and scholar Aleksei Valentin. Together they create other worlds through writing, music, dance, and history. Lev's poetry can be found in publications including Strange Horizons, New Myths, Eye To The Telescope, and you can read Lev's award-nominated short fiction in anthologies including “Sunvault,” “Mother of Invention,” and others. As a disabled Jewish Filipino-American queer, Lev's work explores gender, identity, embodiment, and wholeness through the tools of history and the fantastic.

Ethan Bach is a media artist and the Founder of Alt Ethos, a creative studio specializing in immersive, interactive, and XR technologies. With over 20 years of experience in storytelling and creative tech, Bach uses cutting-edge tools to transform public spaces and create meaningful, joyful connections. His work spans cultural institutions, education, and entertainment, always focusing on innovation and bringing communities together.

As an artist, Bach’s work has been showcased at events like Aqua Art Miami, Currents New Media festival, and international exhibitions in places like Bangalore and Madrid. He's also shared his ideas at events like the Bucharest International Biennial for Contemporary Art and Art Basel Miami. Bach’s passion for blending art and technology drives everything he does from his creative projects to his business, inspiring impactful experiences that connect people in unique and memorable ways.

Mariam Ezzat is an artist interested in the relationship between the subconscious routine and intentional creation. Her practice is a manner of assemblage in small works or larger installation displays. The sculptures are built by processing and arranging the material debris of daily life, mining the inherent poetry and relational possibilities of objects. Ezzat received her MFA from Johnson State College in 2014 and is a professor of foundational design. She is a 2019 Kresge Arts in Detroit Artist Fellow in Sculpture. Ezzat lives and works in Detroit, MI.

Mariam Ezzat

Asia Hamilton is a passionate advocate for women, non-binary artists, and artists of color in Detroit. As a commissioner on the City of Detroit Entertainment Commission and founder of Norwest Gallery of Art, she champions representation and equity in the arts. Her personal journey as a woman artist navigating systemic barriers inspired her to create transformative spaces like Norwest Gallery and Womxn House—an homage to her roots on Detroit's northwest side. Through her gallery, a community-focused contemporary art museum highlighting African Diaspora art, and her work as an environmental photographer, Hamilton celebrates the beauty of God's creation while empowering BIPOC womxn artists. Her mission extends beyond art; she fosters community investment and aims to make Detroit's northwest side a global hub for artistic collaboration. A two-time Knight Arts Challenge winner (2018, 2021), Hamilton continues to spearhead impactful projects that uplift Detroit's creative community.

Sharbreon Plummer, Ph.D. (she/her) is an independent curator, researcher, and artist with a heart for expanding how artistic practice is defined, supported, and framed through theory. Her research focuses on textile traditions, artistic production, and folkways connected to Black life, particularly within the South.

Plummer has facilitated and presented work at institutions such as Project Row Houses, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Rhode Island School of Design, Americans for the Arts, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Princeton University, and several others. A few of her creative projects include her internationally distributed zine Diasporic Threads: Black Women, Fibre and Textiles (2022) and curatorial projects such as Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South (2024). Plummer currently serves as interim artistic director at Threewalls and maintains her creative consultancy AYA Thought Studio.

Nick Austin is a classically trained musician and a prominent voice on Detroit's radio airwaves. After receiving his law degree from Wayne State University, Austin has been a fixture at WDET-FM (Detroit's NPR affiliate) since 2009, where he serves as an on-air host, producer, and contributor. His passion for diverse musical styles began at a young age, leading to the release of two full-length albums and performances in his university's orchestra, jazz, and symphonic bands. Austin also narrates for "Great Lakes Now" on Detroit PBS, sharing his love for the Great Lakes region. His work in media has earned him numerous accolades, including Michigan Emmy Awards and several honors from the Society of Professional Journalists. Outside of the media, Nick is an experienced litigator and serves as general counsel for a Detroit-based hospitality conglomerate.

Kaina Castillo is a songwriter, producer, performer, and curator who creates music that surpasses borders—a unified expression of her native Chicago, as well as her Venezuelan and Guatemalan heritage. Her most recent album “It Was A Home,” released through the independent label City Slang, explores themes of community and self-reflection while pushing the production and songwriting to a new level. You can see this on full, colorful display in her NPR Tiny Desk concert, in which Kaina is surrounded by musicians, illustrators, friends, and family who had a hand in the production of the album.
Kaina's warm and inviting brand of cultural fusion was initially illustrated on her 2019 debut full-length album “Next To The Sun”—a project that established her as a leader in a movement of artists whose work hinges on identity and representation. While promoting this record, Kaina went on national tours with artists from Sleater-Kinney and Cuco to Durand Jones and The Indications, effortlessly finding a home in front of adoring and diverse audiences.

Kim is a Diné (Navajo) director, dramaturg, and actress for stage and film. She has been active and dedicated in the theater and film community for over 25 years, advocating for and promoting Native American performing and cinematic arts in New Mexico. She studied music and theater at the University of New Mexico and most recently graduated with her executive Master of Business Administration from the Anderson School of Management in 2022. Since 2009, Gleason has been the artistic director for Two Worlds, a Native American theater and performing arts organization producing full-stage productions, staged readings, short films, and collaboration projects. She is a co-founder for Native Women Lead, a commissioner for the City of Albuquerque's American Indian and Alaska Native Affairs, and a part-time faculty instructor for the University of New Mexico Theatre Department, teaching Native American theater and producing. Gleason is currently pursuing her goal of opening the first Native American performing arts center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, alongside the board of directors of Two Worlds and the city of Albuquerque.

Madelyn Porter is connectivity and engagement manager for Detroit Public Theatre (DPT), a member of Actor's Equity Association, and has worked as a professional actor/storyteller for the past 40 years. She is a 2019 Kresge Artist Fellow in creative nonfiction, a performer and advisory board member for Detroit Puppet Company, a writer-in-residence for InsideOut Literary Arts, and a performer of historical reenactments and storyliving at the Detroit Historical Museum, The Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village, Troy Historical Village, and The Detroit Institute of the Arts. Porter recently performed in Flint Repertory Theatre's “Wrong River” and Detroit Repertory Theatre's “Gem of the Ocean,” where she received Wilde Awards for best lead actress. She has also won numerous awards for her portrayal of Sojourner Truth on national tour. Porter designed several cultural awareness and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs for school districts and organizations such as Color My World. She also writes and creates stories on commission. The arts make her happy.

Madelyn Porter

Leslie Raymond joined the Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF) as its executive director in 2013, with her leadership role expanding to include festival programming in 2019. Prior to her position with AAFF, as a teaching artist and educator, she founded the New Media Program at University of Texas at San Antonio and served as an assistant professor of art in digital video and new media art at Oakland University, where she was recognized with an Innovations in Teaching award. Raymond is a Film Festival Alliance board member and a third-generation American of Chinese and Jewish descent. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in film/video from the Rhode Island School of Design, a Master of Fine Arts in new genres from the University of Michigan school of art and design, and also studied film, video, and new media art at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Candace Thompson-Zachery was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago and is now local to Brooklyn, NY, where she operates between the spheres of dance, cultural production, and fitness and wellness, with a focus on contemporary Caribbean culture. Thompson-Zachery has had an established career as a performer, choreographer, fitness professional, cultural producer, teaching artist, community facilitator, and Caribbean dance specialist. In addition to her work in these areas, she leads ContempoCaribe, an ongoing choreography and performance project. She is also the founder of Dance Caribbean COLLECTIVE, an organizational platform for Caribbean dance in the diaspora that spearheads the New Traditions Festival in Brooklyn, NY. Thompson-Zachery graduated from Adelphi University's BFA program for dance, and has presented, performed, and taught at major venues including: Queen's Hall (Trinidad and Tobago), the John F. Kennedy Center, New York Live Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Ohio State University. She holds a Master of Arts in performance curation from the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University and an executive program certificate in arts and culture strategy from National Arts Strategies and the University of Pennsylvania. Thompson-Zachery is currently a co-executive director at Dance/NYC, a nonprofit umbrella organization for dance in New York City.

Andrea Abi-Karam is a trans, Arab-American punk poet-performer cyborg. They are the author of “EXTRATRANSMISSION” (Kelsey Street Press, 2019) and with Kay Gabriel, they co-edited “We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics” (Nightboat Books, 2020). Their second book, “Villainy” (Nightboat Books, 2021) reimagines militant collectivity in the wake of the Ghost Ship Fire and the Muslim Ban.

A former attorney, Jean Alicia Elster is the author of the young adult novel “How It Happens” (Wayne State University Press) which received a 2021 Foreword INDIES Silver Award for Young Adult Fiction, a 2022 Midwest Book Silver Award Young Adult Fiction, and the 2022 Bronze Medal in Young Adult Fiction by the Independent Publisher Book Awards. She is the author of middle grade books “Who’s Jim Hines” and “The Colored Car” (Wayne State University Press), each selected as a Michigan Notable Book in 2009 and 2014, respectively. Her other books include the series “I’ll Do the Right Thing,” “I’ll Fly My Own Plane,” “I Have a Dream, Too!,” and “Just Call Me Joe Joe” (Judson Press). Her essays have appeared in Ms., World Vision, Christian Science Sentinel and Black Child. Elster was honored with a 2017 Kresge Artist Fellowship in Literary Arts and three residencies at the Ragdale Foundation.

Jean Alicia Elster

Jonah Mixon-Webster is a poet, educator, scholar, and art activist from Flint, MI. He is the founder of the Flint-based nonprofit Center for Imaginative Freedoms and Economic Relief (C.I.F.E.R.) and serves as chapter leader of PEN America-Detroit. His debut poetry collection, “Stereo(TYPE),” received the PEN America/Joyce Osterweil Award and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. He is an alumnus of Eastern Michigan University and obtained a Ph.D. in creative writing from Illinois State University. Mixon is the inaugural Mellon Arts Postdoctoral Fellow in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University, the recipient of the Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry and fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, Images & Voices of Hope, The Conversation Literary Festival, and the PEN Writing for Justice Program. His poetry and hybrid works are featured in various publications including Obsidian, Harper’s Magazine, The Yale Review, The Rumpus, Callaloo, The New Republic, Best New Poets, and Best American Experimental Writing.

Robert L. Pincus, Ph.D., has been an art critic, author, and art historian for more than four decades. He was the staff art critic of The San Diego Union-Tribune for 25 years and has written for most major art magazines as well as The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of a seminal book on American sculptors Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, “On a Scale That Competes with the World,” as well as numerous exhibition catalogs and essays for books such “W.D.’s Midnight Carnival,” “Sophie Calle: The Reader” and “But Is It Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism.” He has also been the curator of an innovative visiting critics program in Shreveport, Louisiana, Critical Mass, since 2012. He teaches art writing and art history at the California State University, Long Beach and the University of San Diego.

Kelsey Ronan grew up in Flint, Michigan. Her work has appeared in Lit Hub, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Metro Detroit, where she serves as director of Room Project. Her first novel, “Chevy in the Hole,” was a New York Times Editor’s Choice.

Kyohei Abe is an associate professor and the area coordinator of photography at Towson University in Towson, Maryland. He holds a bachelor of fine arts from the College for Creative Studies and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Abe’s research investigates dimensionality and structured play through the constructed photographic space. His work is in museum collections nationwide including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the West Collection, Oaks, PA.

Abe has been the executive director and curator at the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography (DCCP)—now an online venue—since 2010. DCCP began as the first nonprofit center dedicated exclusively to contemporary photography in Detroit. With a mission to foster the appreciation and understanding of photography, DCCP works to promote contemporary lens-based artists who explore the medium in diverse ways: from still and time-based media to the photographic book. Since 2010, he has been helping emerging talents and careers through portfolio reviews nationwide.

Isabel Barbuzza was born in Mendoza, Argentina, and immigrated to the United States during the Argentinean dictatorship. She attended the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo and later UC Santa Barbara, where she received an MFA in studio art. Installation, objects, and site-specific works compose Barbuzza’s practice; she is interested in the power of materiality and the accompanying narratives. Barbuzza uses old encyclopedias to create a tactile reading from paper, including worn library chairs and furniture. Discarded encyclopedias, for example, trace a history of Colonialism, and how their information continues to perpetuate post-colonial legacies of Western superiority over the non-Western world. Barbuzza is a full professor in the sculpture/intermedia program at the University of Iowa, where she was the program head of sculpture and established an internationally recognized program composed of three faculty members. Barbuzza’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in private and public collections.

Andrea Carlson (b. 1979, Ojibwe) is a visual artist who maintains a studio practice in northern Minnesota and Chicago, Illinois. Carlson received an MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2005. She is a recipient of the 2008 McKnight Fellowship, a 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors grant, a 2021 Chicago Artadia Award, and a 2022 United States Artists Fellowship. Carlson is a founding member of the Center for Native Futures in Chicago. Her current research areas include land narratives, decolonization, and assimilation metaphors in film.

Tylonn J. Sawyer is an American multidisciplinary artist educator and curator. Trained in figurative arts-based practices, Sawyer’s work juxtaposes themes of identity—both individual and collective—with investigations of race and history in popular culture. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Sawyer has been included in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad including the Venice Biennale, Italy; Texas A&M University, Texas; The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, and The Detroit Institute of Art, Michigan; Heron Arts, San Francisco; Kravets/Wehby Gallery, Rush Arts, and The New York Academy of Art, New York, amongst others. Sawyer holds an MFA in painting from the New York Academy of Art and a BFA in drawing and painting from Eastern Michigan University. Sawyer currently lives and works in Detroit, Michigan. In 2019, he was awarded a Kresge Artist Fellowship in Visual Arts.

Tylonn J. Sawyer

Juana Williams is the associate curator of African-American Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts. She previously served as the director of exhibitions at Library Street Collective and as adjunct faculty in art history at Wayne State University. Prior to this, she served as the exhibitions curator at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts and held positions at various art institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Wayne State University Art Department Gallery, and the Elaine L. Jacob Gallery. Williams has guest-curated and lectured at numerous venues and contributed to multiple exhibition catalogs. Her curatorial practice focuses on deconstructing cultural and social issues, transgressing traditional boundaries of art criticism and curation, and countering anti-blackness within the arts. Williams is passionate about engaging communities, elevating diverse voices, and giving a platform to artists for innovative expression. She holds a bachelor’s degree in art and a master’s degree in art history, both from Wayne State University.

Piper Carter is an arts and culture organizer and Hip Hop activist focused on entertainment, environmental, climate, education, and food justices as well as makerspace communities. She hosts the Piper Carter Podcast on Detroit is Different where she discusses social justice and Hip Hop with a worldwide audience. Carter is also an image maker; she was among the first Black women to shoot for high-end publications Vogue France, Elle UK, and The New York Times, as well as notable music companies Def Jam, Sony Music, Warner Music, and Universal Music. Her photography has been featured on Tyra Banks’ VH1 show, The Shot. Carter co-founded We Found Hip Hop, an organization that uplifts, celebrates, and supports women, helping them build careers in a safer environment, and is the creator of Dilla Youth Day, a highlight during Black History Month where youth explore S.T.E.A.M disciplines through leading and participating in hands-on, engaging, educational activities while honoring modern homegrown figure, J Dilla.

Michael Boyce Gillespie is a film professor at The City College of New York and The Graduate Center, CUNY. His research and writing focuses on Black visual and expressive culture, film theory, visual historiography, popular music, and contemporary art. Gillespie is author of Film Blackness: American Cinema and the Idea of Black Film (Duke University Press, 2016) and co-editor of Black One Shot, an art criticism series on ASAP/J. His recent writing has appeared in Film Quarterly, The Criterion Collection, Film Comment, and Ends of Cinema. Gillespie’s latest book project is entitled The Case of the 3 Sided Dream.

Mike Khoury is a violinist, composer, improvisor, and researcher. He is the director of the Entropy Studios space and the proprietor of the Entropy Stereo record label, both featuring the work of international as well as Detroit artists. In addition to performing extensively as a soloist, Khoury also plays in the Redford Civic Symphony, in duet with percussionist Ben Hall, in duet with dancer/choreographer Leyya Tawil, and as a member of the group Porcelain Hammer. He has performed across North America as well as in Berlin and Beirut. Khoury holds a BA in economics from University of Michigan and an MA in economics from Michigan State University. He is author of a chapter on the composer Halim El-Dabh in The Arab Avant-Garde: Music, Politics, Modernity (Wesleyan University Press, 2013). Khoury’s projects have received funding from the Knight Foundation and, in 2020, he was awarded a Kresge Artist Fellowship.

Mike Khoury

Brian Kirkbride is a composer, sound artist, DJ, and programmer based in Chicago whose work investigates the re-contextualization of complex scientific and social systems through musical and other auditory representations. Musically, he explores the emotional and psychological effects of the uncanny by playing with near-musicality, arrested narrative, and the subconscious recognition of appropriated pop. Kirkbride’s work has shown at Whitechapel Gallery, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival, Alchemy Film Festival, Biennial of Moving Images, Montréal Underground Film Festival, Onion City Film Festival, Videoex Festival, Kinodot Experimental Film Festival, Video Art Miden, Nonplussed Ultra Film Festival, Simultan Festival, and Fovea. He has collaborated on installations that have been exhibited at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Arts Club of Chicago, EXPO Chicago, the Lincoln Park Conservatory, and at Millennium Park.

Kite aka Suzanne Kite is an Oglála Lakȟóta performance artist, visual artist, and composer raised in Southern California, with a BFA from CalArts in music composition, an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School. She is currently a PhD candidate at Concordia University. Kite’s scholarship and practice investigate contemporary Lakota ontologies through research-creation, computational media, and performance. Recently, Kite has been developing a body interface for movement performances, carbon fiber sculptures, immersive video and sound installations, as well as co-running the experimental electronic imprint, Unheard Records. Kite has also been published in several journals and magazines, including in The Journal of Design and Science (MIT Press), where the award winning article, Making Kin with Machines—co-authored with Jason Lewis, Noelani Arista, and Archer Pechawis—was featured. She is a 2019 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar and a 2020 Tulsa Artist Fellow.

Shawntai Brown is a Detroit writer, media commentator, literacy coordinator, and teaching artist whose work centers on empowering communities through experiences that educate, challenge, and entertain. She has a BA in creative writing from Western Michigan University and a MA in literacy learning from Marygrove College. Brown’s plays have been performed in New York, Chicago, and across Michigan, including her episodic series eLLe, centering queer women experiences. She co-hosts a web show, Woman Crush Everyday, reviewing Black woman-centered queer media and interviewing content producers, and co-founded Black LGBT+ Plays, a creative development network for film and theatre creatives. Brown serves as the school coordinator with InsideOut Literary Arts where she previously taught poetry as a teaching artist. She is a board member and playwright with Extra Mile Playwrights Theatre and a 2020 Kresge Artist Fellow in Live Arts.

Shawntai Brown

Zlatko Ćosić is a video artist born in Yugoslavia whose work includes short films, video installations, theater and architectural projections, and audio-visual performances. Ćosić’s experience as a refugee influenced and shaped the content of his early artistic practice. His work began with the challenges of immigration and shifting identities, evolving to socio-political issues connected to injustice, consumerism, and climate crisis. Ćosić’s artwork has been shown in over 50 countries in exhibitions such as the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Video Vortex XI at Kochi-Muzeris Biennial, St. Louis International Film Festival, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, /si:n/ Biennale, Institut Für Alles Möglische, and the Research Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. Ćosić has received grants including the Regional Arts Commission Artist Fellowship, the WaveMaker Grant at Locust Projects, and a Kranzberg Grant from Laumeier Sculpture Park.

Mary Mar (BGIRL MAMA) is part of the Hardcore Detroit and Venus Fly dance crews. Mar started her journey in Hip Hop culture when she started breakin’ in 2001. She has performed, judged, and competed throughout the U.S. and Canada. She also served as an adjudicator for Screen Dance International Project in 2020 and 2021. In 2016, Mar became part of a dance collective duo, Mama2, with choreographer and educator Amirah Sackett. Mama2 toured with Caravanserai (2016) and Malaysia’s The Get Down Session Tour (2018). They performed at Detroit’s 1st Women in Hip Hop Concert (2016), Bates Dance Festival (2019), and Footsteps in the Dark (2020). Mar won several competitions including Breakin’ the Law in Madison, WI (2011); Detroit’s Quality All Styles (2014); On the Rocks (2016). As she continues her journey with dance and music, she never loses sight of who she is: a Cambodian Muslimah B-Girl.

Aimee McCoy is a film and theater artist and co-founder of The Artizen Company, a film and theater company based in Georgia that focuses on the intersection of arts, faith, and community. Her work utilizes audio/visual elements, live performance, narrative, interactivity, and immersion. In addition to being a director, devisor, and performer, McCoy is also an arts administrator at Alternate ROOTS Inc, a 45-year-old southern-based arts service organization that supports artists, organizers, and activists. She has had the privilege to occupy several different roles within the organization including general member, management fellow, administrator, operations manager, and now the director of membership, affording her an increasingly rounded view of the ecosystem. McCoy considers herself fortunate to be an artist with a penchant for numbers and organizational structures.

Arien Wilkerson (They/She) is a queer Black choreographer, dancer, filmmaker, director, producer, and installation artist. Wilkerson’s practice as an artist encompasses dance, choreography, installation, and theater, weaving elements from each into provocative performances and videos that resist categorization. Climate change, self-love, racism, and sexuality are a few of the issues they have explored through their work. They have received funding support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts (2021) and the Sachs Program for Arts and Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania (2020). Additionally, they are a Connecticut Office of the Arts’ Artist Fellow (2019). Other awards include: Connecticut Dance Alliance Jump Start Award (2019); Greater New Haven Arts Council and Connecticut Office of the Arts’ Artist Workforce Initiative Sponsorship (2019); Connecticut Office of the Arts’ Project Grant (2018); National Endowment for the Arts’ Big Read Grant (2018); Director’s Discretionary Fund Award from the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund (2018); New England Foundation for the Arts’ Rebecca Blunk Fund Award (2018); New England Dance Fund Grant (2017 & 2018); and the Spirit of Juneteenth Award from the Amistad Center for Art and Culture (2017).

Sarika Chandra is associate professor of English at Wayne State University. She researches and teaches in the areas of globalization studies, American studies, and race and ethnic studies. Theorizing the US in a transnational frame, her work focuses on questions of race, ethnicity, im/migration, economy, and the environment. Chandra is the author of Dislocalism: The Crisis of Globalization and the Remobilizing of Americanism. Her publications have appeared in various volumes and journals, including American Quarterly, Cultural Critique, and Modern Language Notes.

Jack Cheng is a Shanghai-born, Detroit-based author of critically acclaimed fiction for young readers. His debut children’s novel, See You in the Cosmos, is the winner of the 2017 Golden Kite and Great Lakes, Great Reads awards for Best Middle Grade Fiction. Cheng visits schools around the world to speak with students about finding their paths as writers and artists, and he volunteers with 826michigan on in-class writing projects in Detroit Public Schools. He is a 2019 Kresge Artist Fellow in Literary Arts.

Jack Cheng

Douglas Kearney has published six collections, including Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry, and California Book Award silver medalist (Poetry). M. NourbeSe Philip calls Kearney’s collection of libretti, Someone Took They Tongues (Subito, 2016), “a seismic, polyphonic mash-up.” Kearney’s Mess and Mess and (Noemi Press, 2015), was a Small Press Distribution Handpicked Selection that Publisher’s Weekly called “an extraordinary book.” His newest collection, Sho (Wave, 2021) is forthcoming. His operas include Sucktion, Mordake, Crescent City, Sweet Land, and next year’s Comet / Poppea commissioned by American Modern Opera Company (AMOC). He has received a Whiting Award, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, as well as residencies/fellowships from Cave Canem, The Rauschenberg Foundation, and others. Kearney teaches creative writing at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and lives in St. Paul with his family.

Jina B. Kim is an assistant professor of English Language & Literature and the study of women & gender at Smith College. Kim received her PhD in English and women’s studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She researches and teaches the fields of feminist disability studies, women-of-color feminisms/queer-of-color critique, and contemporary multi-ethnic U.S. literary studies. She is currently at work on a manuscript, tentatively titled Dreaming of Infrastructure: Crip-of-Color Imaginaries after the U.S. Welfare State, which examines political and aesthetic engagements with public dependency discourse in the literary-cultural afterlife of 1996 U.S. welfare reform. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Signs, American Quarterly, MELUS, Social Text, South Atlantic Quarterly, and the Asian American Literary Review.

Native Detroiter Leslie Reese is a poet, writer, and interdisciplinary arts educator. Currently she is a Chicago Poetry Center Poet-in-Residence in three Chicago public elementary schools—a role she first practiced with InsideOut Literary Arts Project and Broadside Press’s Poet-in-Residence Program. Since earning her MA in interdisciplinary arts from Columbia College Chicago, Reese created Folkloreandliteracy on Instagram, which uses books, visual art, music, movement, and performance as gateways to literacy, discovery, and self-expression. In addition to authoring the poetry collections, Upside Down Tapestry Mosaic History, and Urban Junkstar, Reese has composed and performed original poetry for projects by bassist Marion Hayden (2016 Kresge Artist Fellow) and violinist Regina Carter. She is honored to have performed with musicians Pamela Wise, Djallo Djakte, and Jaribu Shahid on Medicine—a celebration of the poetry of 2019 Kresge Eminent Artist Gloria House—as well as having contributed to House’s monograph, A Life Speaks.

Sima Familant is the owner of Sima Familant: Private Curator & Art Advisor, an art advisory founded in 2006. There, she has been integrally involved in building important collections of contemporary art for her international clients. Her philosophy surrounding art has been largely shaped by receiving her MA in postwar & contemporary art from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London. Her experiences there, being exposed to the burgeoning London art scene and viewing art internationally, made her recognize that you need to see art—a lot of art—to understand art. This engendered her strong commitment to, and love of, contemporary art, which has always served as the backbone in all of her ventures. She still relies on what she learned from her London days, and travels extensively to see art—from the Taj Mahal in India to the Mike Kelley Mobile Homestead in Detroit.

John Brinton Hogan is an artist living and working in San Diego, CA. His practice primarily involves the use of manipulated landscape photographs, which he transforms into complex mixed-media objects. His work has been exhibited internationally and is in numerous private, corporate, and public collections, including the Center for Creative Photography and the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art.

Detroit-bred and based fine artist, muralist, and 2017 Kresge Artist Fellow in Visual Arts, Sydney G. James earned her BFA at the College for Creative Studies in 2001 and began her career as an art director in advertising. James headed to Los Angeles in 2004 to expand her career as a visual artist in the film and television industry, and earned her master’s degree in secondary education. Returning to Detroit in 2011, James has become one of the leading creative voices in southeast Michigan. Recently, the racial and gender positioning of the Black woman in America—as “last” or “least among others” in society—has been the central theme in James’ work. Her portraits and murals seek to reposition this narrative of the Black woman’s visibility and importance, bringing them to the forefront of the conversation.

Sydney G. James

Osman Khan is an artist and educator interested in constructing artifacts and experiences for social criticism and aesthetic expression. His work engages and subverts the materiality behind themes of immigrant and Muslim identity, home/land, postcolonialism, and social and public space through participatory and performative installations; as well as site-specific interventions. Khan is associate professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan. His work has been shown at MassMOCA, MOCAD, Shanghai Biennale, Ars Electronica Center, O.K Center for Contemporary Art, and Socrates Sculpture Park. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, Art Matters grant, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation grant, Knight Foundation Knight Arts Challenge grant, Ars Electronica’s Prix Ars Award of Distinction, and The Arctic Circle 2009 Residency, among others. Khan was born in Pakistan, grew up in New York City, and proudly calls Detroit home.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed grapples with the poetics, politics, and pleasures of the unfinished. With interests in the generative qualities of incompleteness, leakage, dispersal, and syncretism, Rasheed works across an ecosystem of iterative and provisional projects. Projects include sprawling, architecturally-scaled, Xerox-based collages; large-scale text banner installations, publications, digital archives, lecture-performances, library interventions, poems/poetic gestures, and forms yet to be determined. Rasheed has had national and international solo exhibitions and projects at the New Museum, NY; Transmissions Gallery, Glasgow, UK; Rice University, TX; Brooklyn Public Library, NY; Brooklyn Historical Society; and Brooklyn Museum, in addition to public installations with Public Art Fund and For Freedoms/Times Square Arts. Her work has also been exhibited at the 2017 Venice Biennale and will be included in the Glasgow International (2021) and Prospect.5 (2021). She is author of two artist books, An Alphabetical Accumulation of Approximate Observations (Endless Editions, 2019) and No New Theories (Printed Matter, 2019).

Ephraim Asili is a filmmaker, DJ, and traveler whose work focuses on the African diaspora as a cultural force. His films have screened in festivals and venues all over the world, including the New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, Milano Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, MoMA, MoMA PS1, LAMOCA, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Whitney Museum. Asili currently resides in Hudson, NY, and is a professor in the Film and Electronic Arts Department at Bard College.

Leith Campbell is a musician and artist working in technologically mediated works exploring parallels between sound, architecture, and the human/technology interface. They have shown and performed extensively in Southeast Michigan and across the country, both solo and in collaboration with the electromechanical arts group Apetechnology. Notable installations include the “Vision In A Cornfield” exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2012), New Music Detroit’s “Strange Beautiful Music” (2014), The Power Center Renegade Series (2017), and all of the Dlectricity Festivals. Campbell works in audio engineering, mastering, and technical direction, with releases on the Third Man and Two Rooms record labels. They have a Bachelors in Music Technology from Wayne State University (2012) and a Masters of Media Arts from the University of Michigan (2017). Campbell teaches music technology at Wayne State University and is a metal shop technician at the College for Creative Studies.

Leith Campbell

Self-taught multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer, and improviser, Amy Denio performs and produces soundtracks for film, TV, dance, and multimedia performances.

Her work has been commissioned by the Berkeley Symphony, Relache Ensemble, Seattle Theater Group, On the Boards, New York Festival of Song, Bumbershoot Festival, Jack Straw Foundation, and Il Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte, among others. Denio’s projects have received funding from Meet the Composer, Doris Duke Foundation, the National Education Association, Good Will Arts Festival, Washington State Arts Commission, and 4Culture. She has enjoyed Fellowships from Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission, and Civitella Ranieri. Denio has received the Seattle Mayor’s Award and the NYC Bessie Award.

An inductee of the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame, Denio enjoys expanding all genres of music. She is a founding member and president of the all-women Tiptons Sax Quartet and has collaborated with a plethora of musicians and artists since 1980, having produced over 60 recordings and played 1,000 concerts internationally.

Marshalle Montgomery Favors is a filmmaker and producer/director raised in Inkster, Michigan. Since 2006, Montgomery Favors has produced six independent feature films and has written and directed three short films. In 2016, she was a top three finalist for The American Black Film Festival’s “Deeply Rooted In My Community” video contest. Her passion for indie movies inspired her to co-found the Trinity International Film Festival and the Fearless Tribe of Fanatic Filmmakers in Detroit. Montgomery Favors works in collaboration with other filmmakers to host film screenings, workshops, and networking events with industry professionals. Recently, she received a 25 Most Influential Women in Detroit Award. Montgomery Favors works purposefully to contribute to the growth of the film community in metro Detroit.

Oona Mosna is an artist, author, curator, and director of Media City Film Festival. She has organized 1,000+ screenings, retrospectives, and performances with artists including Mati Diop, Barbara Hammer, Carolee Schneemann, and Kevin Jerome Everson at the Presidential Palace (Chile), Toronto International Film Festival, Museum of Modern Art Buenos Aires, Detroit Institute of Arts, 25FPS Festival (Croatia), and countless other festivals, museums, and grass-roots venues worldwide. An accomplished producer, her commissioned films have screened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Venice Film Festival, Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, Jeonju IFF (Korea), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Pompidou Centre (Paris), National Gallery of Art (Washington), New York Film Festival, and Tate Modern, etc. She lives and works in Windsor-Detroit as well as internationally.

Sherrine Azab is the Co-Director of Detroit-based devised theater ensemble A Host of People, which premieres shows in Detroit and tours nationally. Azab holds a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts (Seattle), where she founded the critically acclaimed company Strike Anywhere Productions (2002-2007). During her stint in New York, she worked extensively with Target Margin Theater—of which she is still a proud Associated Artist—and also served as the associate producer for The Foundry Theatre (NYC) during 2011 and 2012. Azab holds a postgraduate certificate from the Institute for Curatorial Practice in performance at Wesleyan University and was a member of the 2008 Lincoln Center Director’s Lab. Other professional highlights include being a staff member of Network of Ensemble Theaters (2012-2019), working with the Arab American National Museum (Dearborn), working with NYC-based theater Ping Chong + Co., and being a 2018 University Musical Society (UMS) Artist in Residence.

A Host of People

Anna Drozdowski builds cultural and civic experiences to engage performance as a method of communication. Common delivery systems include: artist exchange, gently organized chats, retreats, curation, residencies, cups of tea, and belles lettres. A faculty member in socially engaged art at Moore College of Art & Design, Drozdowski has recently brought forth projects with Temple Contemporary, David Lang, JJ Tiziou, Lola38, Matteo Fargion/Jonathan Burrows, Philip Glass, Artists U, and The Crossing. She launched the Headlong Performance Institute, led the adaptive re-use of Neighborhood House, and co-founded the Thirdbird performance series and ThinkingDance journal. Early work in ethnography shapes her practice–she is recognized by NEA Dance Journalism and Fulbright fellowships, as well as grants from: the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, TMU, DAAD, Chicago Seminar on Dance & Performance, PA Arts Council, and PHL Cultural Fund. Her itinerant studio, Cultivator, is reviving a creative homestead in the Vermont hinterlands.

Miryam Johnson is a Detroit-based dance artist with degrees from Eastern Michigan University in dance and African American Studies. She’s had the honor of training with the Ailey Extension and Urban Bush Women’s Summer Leadership Institute, and has performed works by critically acclaimed choreographers Mae O’Donnell and Diane McIntyre.

Johnson’s work explores the intersection between improvised Black movement, vernacular, and communal connection. Her works have been presented at Hartford Memorial Baptist Church, The Masonic Temple, Sidewalk Festival, Eastern Michigan University, and Play House. Johnson’s first evening-length work, Rebellion: An Artistic Exploration, was performed at the Charles H. Wright Museum in conjunction with the 50th Anniversary of the Detroit Rebellion.

Johnson is a co-founder of Collective Sweat Detroit, an organizer with Daring Dances, a committed educator and community member, and a Model D under 30 feature. Johnson believes in using her body and art as protest.

Toby MacNutt is a queer, nonbinary trans, and disabled dancer/choreographer, author, and teacher living in Burlington, VT. Their dance work includes Enter the Void (2018), a performance installation in the darkness of space, accompanied by a sci-fi poetry guidebook; and One, Two (2014), an exploration of embodiment and relationships in dancers with and without disabilities. Toby has also danced with Murmurations Dance’s immersive site works, When Women Were Birds and Bone Hooks, in projects by Tiffany Rhynard’s Big APE and Lida Winfield, and with Heidi Latsky’s GIMP, among others. They were a participating choreographer for AXIS Dance’s Choreo-Lab in 2018 and 2019 and a recipient of NEFA’s Rebecca Blunk Fund Award in 2019.

Toby MacNutt

A native of Honolulu, Jeff Michael Rebudal is the artistic director & arts administrator with Rebudal Dance. He is also a founding member of the critically acclaimed Seán Curran Company. Rebudal choreographed the American Premier of Philip Himberg’s Paper Dolls in Washington, DC. His opera and theatre choreography credits include L’Etoile (performed in New York City Opera, Opéra de Montréal, Glimmerglass Opera, Bergen National Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Austin Lyric Opera), Romeo et Juliette, La Traviata, La Rondine, and A Little Night Music (Michigan Opera Theatre), and Carmen (Cincinnati Opera). Rebudal also choreographed Two Gentlemen of Verona for The Old Globe and his concert dance choreography has been presented at Joyce SoHo, Danspace Project, Lincoln Center, NYC Downtown Dance Festival, Cunningham Studio, and DUMBO Dance Festival as well as among other venues such as the Cultural Center of the Philippines in Manila, and Anargyrios & Korgialenios Theatre of Helioupolis in Greece.

Rebudal is a member of the Association of Arts Administration Educators, a longtime board member for the American College Dance Association—currently serving as vice president for membership—and a performing arts panelist for New York Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco Arts Council, and The Kresge Foundation, among others. He has an MFA in performing arts management & dance from the American University and a BA in dance & journalism from the University of Hawai’i at Mãnoa. Rebudal was previously associate professor and director of dance at Wayne State University. He currently resides in Manhattan, where he is the incoming director and clinical professor of arts & entertainment management graduate program for the Lubin School of Business at Pace University.

Terry Blackhawk’s five full-length poetry collections include Escape Artist (John Ciardi Prize, 2003), The Light Between (WSU Press) and One Less River (Mayapple Press, forthcoming 2019)—with awards from Nimrod (2010 Pablo Neruda Prize), America (1990 Foley Prize) and others. A former high school creative writing teacher, Blackhawk is founding director emerita (1995-2015) of InsideOut Literary Arts Project and a 2013 Kresge Artist Fellow. She received a Detroit Metro Times Progressive Hero Award (1999), the MI Governor’s Award for Arts Education (2001), grants from the Michigan Council for the Arts (1998-2000), and National Endowment for the Humanities (1992-1993), and was twice named MI Creative Writing Teacher of the Year (1990, 2008). She served (2008-2012) on the board of AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) and has presented for the White House and the Library of Congress. Blackhawk holds an Honorary Doctorate from Oakland University and divides her time between Connecticut and Detroit.

Terry Blackhawk

Desiree Cooper is a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, former attorney, and Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist. Her debut collection of flash fiction, Know the Mother (Wayne State University Press, 2016), is a 2017 Michigan Notable Book that has won numerous awards, including a 2016 Foreword INDIES Finalist and a 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Award. Cooper’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in The Best Small Fictions 2018, Callaloo, Michigan Quarterly Review, Hypertext Review, and Best African American Fiction 2010, among other online and print publications. Cooper is genre agnostic. In 2018, she translated one of her short fictions to video in “The Choice,” a short film about reproductive rights and recipient of a 2019 Outstanding Achievement Award from the Berlin Flash Film Festival. Cooper collaborated with the director of dance at The College William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, to create a dance inspired by the feminist themes of her short fiction. The performance called “Aloft” debuted in October, 2018. Cooper was a founding board member of Cave Canem, the pre-eminent national residency for emerging black poets, and has received residencies at Kimbilio and Ragdale.

Desiree Cooper

Rob Halpern lives between San Francisco and Ypsilanti, Michigan, where he teaches at Eastern Michigan University and Huron Valley Women’s Prison. His most recent book of poetry, prose, essays, letters, and manifestos is Weak Link (Atelos 2019). Other books include Common Place (Ugly Duckling Presse 2015) and Music for Porn (Nightboat Books 2012). Together with Robin Tremblay-McGaw, he co-edited From Our Hearts to Yours: New Narrative as Contemporary Practice (Contemporary Practice), which was listed among Entropy‘s “Best Non-Fiction” books of 2017. Halpern’s critical and lyrical essays appear in Mediations, Brooklyn Rail, Journal of Narrative Theory, Modernist Cultures, Chicago Review. He is currently completing his translations of Georges Perec’s early essays on aesthetics and politics, while editing Bruce Boone Dismembered: Selected Poems, Stories, and Essays, which will be published later this year.

Casey Rocheteau is the author of Knocked up on Yes (Sargent Press 2012) and The Dozen (Sibling Rivalry 2016) and the creator of the Black Medusa Tarot.They are one of the co-founders of the Fortify Writing Retreat in Detroit. The inaugural winner of Write A House, Casey is also a Cave Canem, Callalloo Writers Workshop, and Bread Loaf in Sicily fellow. They have taught creative writing as an InsideOut writer in residence. Casey is formerly an editor at The Offing and the former editor in chief of Heart Online Journal.

Casey Rocheteau

Tyrone Williams teaches literature and theory at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the author of several chapbooks and five books of poetry: c.c., On Spec, The Hero Project of the Century, Adventures of Pi, Howell and As Iz. A limited-edition art project, Trump l’oeil, was published by Hostile Books in 2017. He and Jeanne Heuving edited the anthology, Inciting Poetics (2019).

Cesar Cornejo’s work reflects critically on socio-political issues while exploring the relationship between art, architecture, and society. He has participated in exhibitions such as the California Pacific Triennial 2017, XII Havana Biennial, Busan Biennial 2008, Art Positions at Art Basel Miami 2011, the Biennial S-Files Museo del Barrio, NY; and V Biennial Barro de America, Venezuela. Cornejo received awards and residencies from the Creative Capital Foundation, Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation, The Brown Foundation Fellows Program at Dora Maar House, The George A and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation, Sharpe Walentas Studio Program, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Art Omi, among others. He received M.A. and PhD degrees in fine arts from the Tokyo University of the Arts and a bachelor’s degree and professional license in architecture from the Ricardo Palma University in Lima Peru. He is associate professor at the School of Art and Art History at the University of South Florida.

Carole Harris is a fiber artist, working primarily in the art quilt medium. Her work has extended, refined, and subverted the boundaries and concepts of traditional quilting. Her recent work is inspired by the impact of time on natural and constructed environments. It celebrates and embraces the beauty in the frayed, the decaying, and the repaired. Harris has exhibited extensively worldwide. Among the many awards and honors she has received is a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellowship. She earned a B.F.A. from Wayne State University, Detroit (1966); in interior architecture and crafts. In 1976 she established the interior design firm Harris Design Group. Her many successful clients over the next 33 years included numerous health care and educational institutions, hospitality and industrial venues, as well as private homes. The firm was dissolved in 2009, when Harris retired to commit to her studio practice full-time.

Carole Harris

Erik Paul Howard is a photographer as well as co-founder of Inside Southwest Detroit, Young Nation, and The Alley Project, in southwest Detroit. He combines his passion for youth and community development with his love of photography. Through cultural and place-based activities such as lowriding and street art, Howard has been building with neighbors and youth in southwest Detroit for over 20 years. Erik’s photography documents his and others’ personal relationships and interactions in community. It captures the excitement of people in processes of development, discovery, and general life experiences.

Born in Iran, Amitis Motevalli explores the cultural resistance and survival of people living in poverty, conflict, and/or war. Through various media, including sculpture, video, performance, and collaborative public art, her work juxtaposes iconography with iconoclasm. Her work intends to ask questions about violence, occupation, and the path to decolonization, while invoking the significance of a secular grassroots struggle. For her current project, Motevalli is working internationally with a broad spectrum of transnational cultural Muslims in order to research what defines home, life, and labor in the urgency of survival. She is particularly concerned with conducting workshops with SWANA people who come from places of political and religious conflict and collaborating on public art projects. Currently living and working in Los Angeles, Motevalli exhibits art internationally while also working to create an active and resistant cultural discourse through information exchange in art, pedagogy, or organizing artist and educators.

Yao-Fen You is senior curator and head of product design and decorative arts at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Prior to joining Cooper Hewitt in 2019, she was associate curator of European sculpture and decorative arts at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). At the DIA, she organized “Bitter|Sweet: Coffee, Tea & Chocolate” (2016), the DIA’s first exhibition to engage all five senses; “Fabergé: The Rise and Fall, The Collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts” (2012); and “Designed for Convenience: Tableware from the DIA” (2011). A frequent author and invited speaker, You has lectured and participated in symposia and panels nationally and internationally. Her publications and talks reflect her diverse expertise in European polychrome sculpture, the history of collecting and art markets, the art of dining, and Northern European decorative arts. You holds a PhD and M.A. in history of art from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Juanita Anderson, area head of Media Arts and Studies in the Department of Communication at Wayne State University, is a veteran producer, executive producer and documentary filmmaker. A native of Detroit, she has previously held the positions of producer/director and production manager at WSIU-TV (Carbondale, IL), executive producer of Cultural Affairs and Special Projects for WTVS-Detroit Public Television, and series producer for WGBH-Boston. Her work has garnered numerous awards including seven regional Emmys, a DuPont Columbia Silver Baton and a George Foster Peabody Award. A long-standing advocate for diversity in public media and for independent media, Anderson has served on the board of directors of the Independent Television Service (1998-2005), and was a co-founder of the National Black Programming Consortium (now Black Public Media). Anderson is also a past president (1989-1991) of the National Conference of Artists (NCA), the nation’s oldest African American arts organization. She is currently a member of the NCA – Michigan Chapter’s board of directors and a member of Final Girls, an organization of women filmmakers in Detroit. Anderson is also an accomplished still photographer whose work has been exhibited internationally and is included in the permanent collections of Southern Methodist University and the Mott-Warsh Collection.

Jazz violinist Regina Carter began taking music lessons at the age of two, first for the piano and later for the violin. Though classically trained, she started to become interested in jazz and funk when she was a teenager. She graduated from Cass Technical High School in Detroit, Michigan and enrolled in the New England Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts. She went on to receive her B.A. degree in music from Oakland University.

In 1987, Carter joined the all-female pop-jazz quintet Straight Ahead, and appeared on their first three albums before leaving the band in 1991 and moving to New York City, where she performed and recorded with a variety of high-profile jazz and pop artists, including Aretha Franklin, Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Billy Joel, Dolly Parton, Max Roach and Oliver Lake. Carter released her first solo album, Regina Carter, in 1995. It was followed by Something for Grace in 1997, Rhythms of the Heart in 1999, Motor City Moments in 2000, Paganini: After a Dream in 2003, I’ll Be Seeing You: A Sentimental Journey in 2006, Reverse Thread in 2010, Southern Comfort in March of 2014 and Ella: Accentuate the Positive in 2017.

In 2006, Carter was awarded the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and in 2007, she was named artist-in-residence at her alma mater, Oakland University, for which she teaches master classes and works with students, faculty and ensembles. She also served as one of the Resident Artistic Directors for the discerning SFJAZZ during its inaugural season. Most recently, was appointed as the Director of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s All-Female Jazz Residency, a unique summer immersion program for aspiring women jazz professionals.

Recipient of the 2016 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, composer Wayne Horvitz’s own ensembles include the Snowghost Trio, Sweeter Than the Day, and The Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble. Horvitz’s commissioners include The Kitchen, The Seattle Symphony, Kronos, BAM, New World Records, The Flynn Theater, and Vienna Jazz. He has received 3 MAP Fund Awards, the NEA American Masterpiece Award, 3 Artist Trusts Fellowships and more. As a collaborator and producer, he has worked with Bill Frisell, Robin Holcomb, Butch Morris, Bobby Previte, George Lewis, Reggie Watts, John Zorn (Naked City Etc.), World Saxophone Quartet, Fontella Bass, John Adams, and Eddie Palmieri. Collaborators in theater, dance, and film include Carey Perloff, Bill Irwin, Gus Van Sant, Paul Taylor, and Paul Magid. “There’s nobody else out there I hear even attempting to cover some kind of similar range, and do it so convincingly” - All About Jazz

Rashaad Newsome lives and works in New York City. He was born in 1979 in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he received a BFA in art history at Tulane University in 2001. In 2004, he received a Certificate of Study in Digital Post Production from Film/Video Arts Inc. (NYC). In 2005, he studied Max/MSP programming at Harvestworks Digital Media Art Center (NYC). He has exhibited and performed in galleries, museums, institutions, and festivals throughout the world including: the studio museum in Harlem (NYC), the National Museum of African American History and Culture (DC), the Whitney Museum (NYC), Brooklyn Museum (NYC), MOMA PS1 (NYC), SFMOMA (CA), New Orleans Museum of Art (LA), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, France), the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture (Moscow, Russia), and MUSA (Vienna, Austria). Recent awards include the 2017/2018 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, 2017 Rush Arts Gold Rush Award, and a 2011 the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award.

Ara Topouzian is an Armenian-American musician whose proficiency at the kanun (Middle Eastern harp) has made him a nationally recognized artist. He has performed in concert, at music festivals and many celebrated venues across the united states, with the top musicians in Middle Eastern music. Topouzian’s traditional musical style keeps to his Armenian heritage but has expanded to include music from around the Middle East, as well as jazz, fusion, new age, and blues. The recipient of numerous awards, Topouzian’s music has been heard and sold around the globe. In 2012, Topouzian became an Kresge Artist Fellow and in 2015, he was honored as artist in residence for Farmington Hills, MI.

Ara Topouzian

Marjani Fortè-Saunders is a choreographer, performer, organizer, and curator and is currently the co-director of Alkebulan Cultural Center of Pasadena, CA. She is a recipient of the 2017 Outstanding Performance Bessie Award as one of 21 Black Womyn Artists of Skeleton Architecture. Marjani is an inaugural recipient of the Urban Bush Women’s Choreographic Center Fellowship and a two-time Princess Grace Foundation awardee. Memoirs of a…Unicorn is a recipient of the 2017 MAP Fund, Jerome Foundation Grant, and was named Dance Magazine’s Best of 2017. In 2016, as recipient of the Surdna Foundation, Marjani curated an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Art in Brooklyn titled Being Here…in Memory. Marjani facilitates within UBW’s BOLD Teaching Network, offering their unique approach to community engagement and organizing.

Billicia Hines is an Assistant Professor and is Director of the Black Theatre Program at Wayne State University. Previously, she was Director of Theatre at Elizabeth City State University. She began her formal training in drama in the high school program at the North Carolina School of the Arts. Thereafter, she attended NC Agricultural & Technical State University in Greensboro, NC (BFAA, Professional Theatre) and University of Missouri at Kansas City (MFA, Acting). She is a certified teacher of the Michael Chekhov Technique from the Great Lakes Michael Chekhov Consortium, an organization in which she proudly holds the position of Associate Artist. Billicia has presented Michael Chekhov Acting Technique workshops throughout various universities and theatre conferences. Also, she has performed the one-woman shows, HeLa: the Immortal Cell Line of Henrietta Lacks, Testimonies Of Truth: Truth, Parks, and Giovanni, and Flying On Broken Wings: A Journey Through Domestic Violence. She has also found time to do voice-over work, independent films, and many other promotional videos.

Lisa Rose LaMarre Wilmot is a choreographer testing the boundaries of performance-based artwork and working to bring the art of dance away from the lofty stage and into the realm of everyday life. She is the Director of LaMarre and Dancers, a teaching artist for VSA Michigan, and has been instructing at Wayne State University since 2012. She is a member of both the Michigan Dance Council and National Dance Education Organization. Her choreography has been produced for Wayne State University, Grand Valley State University, Oakland University, ArtPrize7, DDC Dances, People Dancing, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit Contemporary, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit Music Hall, Sidewalk Performing Arts Festival, ArtPeers, and numerous spaces nationally. Lisa, pursuing a Master of Arts in Teaching Artistry, is a Presidential Scholar of Western Michigan University holding a Bachelor of Arts.

Billy Mark is an experimental artist whose work is rooted in the art of poetic freestyle. Based in poetry, his work extends to areas of music, theater, sculpture, movement and installation. His current work explores the production of improvisational books and other multidisciplinary long forms of improvisation. A graduate of the California Institute of the Arts, his writing has been published in The Guidebook of Alternative Nows and SEEN magazine. His work has been performed at REDCAT (Los Angeles), Spiel Festival (Austria), Detroit Contemporary, and Bushwick Open Studios (New York).

Billy Mark

Rulan Tangen’s work explores movement as an evolving language, rooted in global indigenous cosmologies from her own lineage and cultivated through collaborative creation processes with diverse indigenous and intertribal peoples. She acknowledges dance as a functional ritual for transformation and healing, integral to the process of decolonizing the body, and in kinetic energetic connection with all relations – human and beyond. As Founding Artistic Director/Choreographer of Dancing Earth, she has passionately cultivated successive generations of indigenous contemporary performing artists, and embodies her belief in dance as a purposeful center of continuance of life. She is a recipient of the 2018 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Award and is grateful for all that roots her, supporting pathways for the dreaming and doing of Dancing Earth: moving, shaking, and stomping the world into renewal.

Fiction writer and art critic Lynn Crawford is a founding board member of Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), a 2010 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow and a 2016 Rauschenberg Writing Fellow. Her books include Solow, Blow, Fortification Resort, a series of art-related sestinas, Simply Separate People and Simply Separate People, Two. Her latest novel (2016) is Shankus & Kitto : A Saga. Her work appears in various anthologies (Oulipo Compendium, Fetish, Brooklyn Rail, Fence) and journals (Art in America, Infinite Mile, Detroit Research, Hyperallergic, Tema Celeste, McSweeney’s, Lilies and Cannonballs, Parkett, Bookforum, Metro Times). Most recently she contributed a story, TNW and Me to The-N-Word, a monograph on African-American painter Peter Williams edited by Ryan Standfest, and an essay to Detroit, The Dream is now, a collection of photographs of art, food and design by Michael Arnaud (Abrams Books). Lynn earned a MSW from New York University and has worked in various psychiatric, community, hospital, museum and school settings. She lives with her family north of Detroit.

Lynn Crawford

Kahn Santori Davison is from Detroit, Michigan. He is formerly an art columnist for The Gazette News and Arts and Entertainment writer for the Michigan Citizen. He’s currently a music writer for the Detroit Metro Times. He has served as a creative writing instructor at Detroit Impact Community Center and Inside Out Literary Arts. He was one half of the poetry group Khaos and a co-star in the award winning play Mahogany Drams.

He’s been featured on the Boyce Watkins Show, Brenda Perryman Show, and others. He’s a Cave Canem fellow who’s works have been featured in The Alabama Poetry Society, The Entoitist, The Baltimore Review, London’s X-Bout, Barbaric Yap, Callaloo, Black Reniaissance Noire, and The Litchfield Review. He is author of the poetry book Blaze (Willow Books). He is the recipient of the 2015 Kresge Literary Arts Fellowship.

Kahn Santori Davison

Brian McGuigan was born and raised in Queens, NY and now lives in Seattle where he’s the Program Director at Artist Trust, a nonprofit arts organization providing grantmaking and professional development for Washington State artists of all disciplines. When he’s not working in the arts, he’s working on a memoir. His writing has appeared in Gawker, The Rumpus, Salon, The Stranger, The Weeklings, City Arts, and elsewhere and has received support from 4Culture, Artist Trust, and Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. In 2010, The Stranger shortlisted him for their Genius Award in Literature, and in 2011, City Arts named him one of Seattle’s Power 50 Culture Makers. For about a decade, he worked in programs at Hugo House, the second largest writers’ center in the country, where he devised and organized hundreds of literary readings, events, and programs.

Anna Moschovakis’s most recent books are They and We Will Get Into Trouble for This (poems) and Bresson on Bresson (interviews with Robert Bresson, translated from the French). She is the author of two previous books, You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake and I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone, as well as numerous chapbooks and translations. She teaches in the MFA programs at Pratt Institute and Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College and was the 2016 Holloway Lecturer in the Practice of Poetry at U.C. Berkeley. A longtime member of Brooklyn-based publishing collective Ugly Duckling Presse, she recently co-founded Bushel, an art and community space in Delhi, NY. Her first novel, The Rejection of the Progress of Love, is forthcoming from Coffee House Press.

Janet Webster Jones, a native Detroiter, attended Detroit Public Schools for elementary and secondary education. She graduated from Spelman College (B.A,) and Wayne State University (M.Ed.), and was employed as an educator in Detroit Public Schools for nearly 42 years serving students, families and the Detroit community in several positions: Elementary Education Teacher, Speech and Language Pathologist, teacher consultant, and Administrator and Staff Development Specialist. Jones is currently the owner/operator of Source Booksellers, a unique niche of Non-fiction books located in Midtown Detroit. Source Booksellers was among 50 best independent bookstore in the USA named by Huffington Post (April28 2017). She resides in Detroit.

Sabrina Nelson is a Detroit born painter, by degree from Center for Creative Studies. Influenced by Yoruba Religion as well as Eastern and African Philosophy

Sabrina has been a professional artist for over 36 years and an educator. As a studio artist at the Detroit Institute of Arts, she lectures and preforms art demonstrations. She is also on the staff for the College for Creative Studies.

Sabrina has lectured on the preservation of Black Feminism in Art at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. In addition, she has judged art competitions for over 27 years. Sabrina often interviews guest artist for the City of Detroit’s Culture video channel MyDetroitCable.

Work has been exhibited in MI,Florida, New York, Louisiana, Illinois and Ohio. Most recently she was invited to American University in Paris, France to participate as a sketching artist for the James Baldwin Confrence.

Sabrina Nelson

Valerie Cassel Oliver is senior curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston were she has organized numerous exhibitions including Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970 (2005); Cinema Remixed and Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image with Dr. Andrea Barnwell Brownlee (2009); Hand+Made: The Performative Impulse in Art and Craft and Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art (2012). In addition, she has mounted numerous surveys by such artists as Benjamin Patterson, Donald Moffett, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Jennie C. Jones and Angel Otero, among many others.

Cassel Oliver has lectured widely and published extensively. She is the recipient of a Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship (2007); the prestigious David C. Driskell Award (2011) for scholarship in African American art; and the Arthur and Carol Kaufman Goldberg Foundation-to-Life Fellowship at Hunter College (2016). In 2009, she was selected as a fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership.

Born in Morelos, Mexico, Jorge Rojas is a multidisciplinary artist, independent curator, and art educator. He studied Art at the University of Utah and at Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and uses traditional and new media and performance art to explore the creation and processes involved in artistic production. At the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, he oversees all education, community outreach, and adult programming initiatives for the Museum. Mr. Rojas’ work and curatorial projects have been exhibited in galleries and museums across the US, including Museo del Barrio, the Queens Museum of Art, and White Box in New York; New World Museum and Project Row Houses in Houston; and the UMFA and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City. In 2009 he founded Low Lives, and international, multi-venue online performance festival, where he served as director, producer, and curator.

Sarah Rose Sharp is a Detroit-based writer, activist, photographer and multimedia artist. She writes about art and culture, online and in print, for Art in America, Hyperallergic, Flash Art, ArtSlant and others. She was named a 2015 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow for Arts Criticism and was selected as a participant in the 2015 Art Writing Workshop facilitated by AICA/USA and the Art Writers Grant Program. She is primarily concerned with artist and viewer experiences of making and engaging with art, and conducts ongoing research in the state of contemporary art in redeveloping cities, including a process blog called Breakfast with the Artist.

Sarah Rose Sharp

John Sims, a Detroit native, is a multi-media conceptual artist, writer and producer, and former Coordinator of Mathematics at Ringling College of Art and Design. His projects span the areas of installation, text, music, film, performance and large scale activism, informed by mathematics, the politics of sacred symbols/anniversaries and poetic collaboration. He is currently completing the Recoloration Proclamation, a 16-year multimedia project featuring: a collection of various Confederate flags installations, annual national Burn and Bury event, a play, a documentary film and the music project – AfroDixieRemixes.

He has lectured and exhibited both nationally and internationally and his work has been featured in Art in America, Sculpture, Transition, FiberArts, Science News, CNN, NBC News, New York Times, USA Today, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and the science journal Nature.

Todd Chandler is a filmmaker, musician, and interdisciplinary artist. His work has been featured at the Hammer Museum, the Torino Film Festival, Brooklyn Museum, Mass MoCA, 01SJ Biennial, and the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. His first feature film, Flood Tide (2013), documents and reimagines a journey down the Hudson River on a fleet of sculptural rafts dreamed up by the artist Swoon. He is the co-creator of Empire Drive-In and was a founding member of the Miss Rockaway Armada and the band Dark Dark Dark. He has received fellowships and support from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, New York State Council for the Arts, Experimental Television Center, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the Wexner Center for the Arts. He teaches in the Department of Film at Brooklyn College.

A native Detroiter and Howard University graduate, Njia Kai directs and curates major public events and cultural arts projects with a focus on community enrichment, and in support of placemaking initiatives. Her 30 years of production experience include the annual City of Detroit Tree Lighting, Art X Detroit and Noel Night in Midtown, the Wright Museum African World Festival, and the downtown entertainment series at Campus Martius Park. Njia has led arts-based summer and after-school programs for city youth and lends her expertise to a wide variety of community projects.

Terence Nance is an artist born and raised in Dallas, Texas. Each of his siblings are artists: Norvis Jr. Djore, and Classi. Terence makes music under the name Terence Etc. His first feature film, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, premiered in the New Frontier section of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. The film has garnered Terence recognition from Filmmaker magazine, where he was selected as one of the 25 new faces of independent film. Oversimplification… also won the 2012 Gotham Award for “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You.” The film has since been released theatrically in the US, UK, France, and South Africa. It is currently available on DVD and Digitally through Cinema Guild. Terence currently resides in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn – along with the rest of The Swarm and is currently developing his next feature film.

Frank Pahl received a bachelor of arts degree in English from Wayne State University, Detroit and a master of fine arts degree in art and design with an emphasis in sound art from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has received over 80 commissions to write music for theater, film and dance and has performed throughout North America, Europe and Japan. His music has appeared on over 70 releases. Since 2000, he’s actively created kinetic sound installations, which are frequently designed to accompany his music. Pahl has taught sound design at College for Creative Studies, Detroit and sound-related courses at University of Michigan. His current music projects are Scavenger Quartet and Little Bang Theory.

Frank Pahl

Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist working with voice, sound processing, sampled sound, and video. A pioneer of live looping techniques, she creates works combining experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, processing, and gesture-activated MIDI controllers. She has composed scores for dance, film, and new music chamber ensembles including Kronos Quartet. Z has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Japan – including appearances at Bang on a Can (New York), Other Minds (San Francisco), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), and Pina Bausch Tanztheater Festival (Wuppertal, Germany). She’s shown installation works at the Whitney Museum (NY), Diözesanmuseum (Cologne), and Krannert Museum (IL). Her awards include a Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Capital, the Alpert Award, MAP Fund, ASCAP Plus Award, Ars Electronica, and the NEA Japan/US Friendship Fellowship. She holds a music degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Penny Godboldo completed her Ph.B. degree in Education at Wayne State University and holds an M.A. Degree in Humanities from University of Detroit in English, with a cognate in Dance/Theater. She trained at the Alvin Ailey American Dance School, Broadway Dance Center, Steps Dance Studio and the Martha Graham School in New York City. She mentored under dance Icon Katherine Dunham for over 20 years and is the only certified instructor of the Dunham technique in Michigan. She has taught and performed in the U.S. (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles) as well as Toronto, Canada and various countries including England, Scotland, France and Japan. Godboldo has conducted research: “Traditional Dance” and “Dance in Religion” in Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Benin, and West Africa. Since 2006 she has frequently presented papers on her work at the KOSANBA Academic Colloquium, at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Massachusetts University, Wayne State University, among other places. Professor Godboldo is currently in her 32nd year on faculty at Marygrove College, Artistic Director of the Hartford Baptist Church Liturgical Dance Ministry, and directs a community mentoring program through the arts, “Discovery: GAP” for adolescent girls and directs the Detroit Legacy Project each summer.

Penny Godboldo

Aku Kadogo is an international theatre director, choreographer, performer, educator and cultural arts curator. Kadogo has directed and created theatre works in Australia, Korea, Europe and the United States. This multi-faceted artist directs highly energetic, imaginative, original theatre works.She has served as the Director of the Black Theatre Program at Wayne State University, been a guest Faculty member at Yongin University in South Korea and is currently a Visiting Scholar at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. Kadogo has worked in film, television and stage making her career debut in the original Broadway production of for colored girls who considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.

She divides her time between Atlanta and Sydney, Australia.

Carrie Morris is a director, puppeteer and performance artist with an interest in creating experiences that extend beyond the stage and out into the world.

Carrie’s work as a director and performing artist combines puppetry, multimedia and the gestural language of experimental theater. She has a BFA in directing theater from NYU and an MFA in studio art from U of M Ann Arbor. Her work has been seen in the New York International Fringe Festival, The Athens Museum of Art, Seattle’s Annex Theater, the Canadian Fringe Festival, the CATCH! New Artist Series in Brooklyn, NY, the Orlando International Fringe Festival, the Matrix Theater, as an invited artist working with the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, at The Flicker Film Festival in Richmond, VA, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. She is a J. William Fulbright grantee in the field of performance art for creative work in multimedia shadow puppetry in Solo, Indonesia, a Princess Grace grantee in the field of theater for puppetry design and direction and for several years was the program manager of Puppetry and Performing Arts at the Detroit Institute of Arts. She has been the director of CMAP (Carrie Morris Arts Production) since it was established in 2012 as a place where Detroiters can experience and explore contemporary puppetry, performance and multimedia works.

Carrie Morris

Leyya Mona Tawil is an artist working with dance and music practices. Tawil is the artistic director of DANCE ELIXIR and TAC: Temescal Art Center. Her work has been presented in Russia, Canada and 13 countries throughout Europe and the Arab world. Her approach to experimental performance is based on conceptual scoring and location based variables. She has discussed this process with author Linda Weintraub for Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence; as well as interviews with NEA Art Talks, Art21 (NYC), Art Territories (Ramallah), Wall Street Journal and American Theater Magazine. Presentation highlights include New York Live Arts/Live Ideas (NYC), Dock11 (Berlin), MOCAD (Detroit), BIPOD9 (Beirut), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), TransDance15 (Cairo) and the Museum of Nonconformist Art (Saint Petersburg).

Leyya Mona Tawil

Sarah Wilke has served as the Managing Director of Seattle’s On the Boards contemporary performing arts center since 2004. Prior to OtB, Wilke worked as the Managing Director of Consolidated Works in Seattle, as the Associate Curator of Education at the Tacoma Art Museum, and at the Freer & Sackler Galleries in Washington, DC where she held various education, programming and curatorial positions. Prior to moving to Seattle, Wilke was a Fulbright Fellow in Sri Lanka. She is a graduate of Bowdoin College (Brunswick, Maine) and received her Master’s from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (Cambridge, MA). She has served as a panelist for the NEA, the National Performance Network, Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture, and the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage.

Samiya Bashir is the author of Gospel, finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the 2009 Lambda Literary Award, and Where the Apple Falls, a Poetry Foundation bestseller and finalist for the 2005 Lambda Literary Award. Bashir is editor of Black Women’s Erotica 2 and co-editor, with Tony Medina and Quraysh Ali Lansana, of Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art. Bashir’s poetry, stories, articles and editorial work have been featured in numerous publications including, most recently and forthcoming, in Poetry, World Literature Today, Ecotone, HOAX, The Normal School, Poet Lore, Michigan Quarterly Review, Crab Orchard Review, Cura, The Normal School, Eleven Eleven, Cascadia Review, Hubbub, Callaloo and The Encyclopedia Project. Her long poem, Coronagraphy, was a 2013 Pushcart Prize nominee. A long-time communications professional focused on editorial, arts, and social justice movement building, Bashir is a founding organizer of Fire & Ink, an advocacy organization and writer’s festival for LGBT writers of African descent. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she teaches creative writing at Reed College.

Samiya Bashir

renée c. hoogland is Professor of English at Wayne State University where she teaches literature and culture after 1870, critical theory, cultural studies, and visual culture. She has published widely in American and British literature, film, visual culture, and critical theory. Her most recent book is A Violent Embrace: Art and Aesthetics after Representation (2014, Dartmouth College Press). hoogland is the editor of Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts.

Kim Hunter is life-long Detroiter employed in media relations for social justice groups. He has served as Poet-in-Residence in several Detroit public schools through the InsideOut Literary Arts Project. He co-directs the Woodward Line Poetry Series which received a Knights Arts Challenge Detroit award in 2013. His work has appeared in Rainbow Darkness, Abandon Automobile, Triage, Hipology, Metro Times, Dispatch Detroit and Graffiti Rag. He has published two collections of poetry: borne on slow knives and edge of the time zone. In 2012, he received a Kresge Artist Fellowship in the Literary Arts.

Kim Hunter

Albert Mobilio is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and the National Book Critics Circle award for criticism. His work has appeared in Harper’s, Black Clock, Bomb, Cabinet, Open City, Jacket, and Tin House. Books of poetry include Bendable Siege, The Geographics, Me with Animal Towering, and Touch Wood. A volume of short fiction, Games and Stunts was published in 2012 by Belladonna Books. He is an assistant professor of literary studies at the New School’s Eugene Lang College, an editor at Bookforum, and an editor for Hyperallergic Weekend.

Anne Waldman is a prolific poet, editor, professor and performer, creating radical hybrid forms for the long poem. Author of over 40 books, including the magnum opus, The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment, which won the PEN Center 2012 Award for Poetry. Her book Gossamurmur is an allegorical adventure and plea for poetry’s archive. She co-founded and directed The Poetry Project at St Mark’s in the 1960-70s and went on to co-found The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University with Allen Ginsberg, where she continues to curate the Summer Writing Program. Widely traveled and translated, she has worked most recently in Morocco, India and France. Her most recent anthology is CROSS WORLDS (co-edited with Laura Wright). She is a recipient of the Shelley Memorial Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2013-14, and is a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.

Anne Waldman

Born in 1953, sculptor Chakaia Booker fuses ecological concerns with explorations of racial and economic difference, globalization, and gender by recycling discarded tires into complex assemblages. Booker began to integrate discarded construction materials into large, outdoor sculptures in the early 1990s. Tires resonate with her for their versatility and rich range of historical and cultural associations. Booker slices, twists, weaves, and rivets this medium into radically new forms and textures, which easily withstand outdoor environments. For her, the varied tones of the rubber parallels human diversity, while the tire treads suggest images as varied as African scarification and textile designs. Though she has adopted utilitarian jeans and work boots in her studio, she always wears a large, intricately wrapped headdress, which has links to her earliest wearable art and has become her fashion signature. Booker received a BA in sociology from Rutgers University in 1976, and an MFA from the City College of New York in 1993. She gained international acclaim at the 2000 Whitney Biennial with It’s So Hard to Be Green, her 12.5 x 21 foot wall-hung tire sculpture. Booker received a Pollock-Krasner grant in 2002 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. She has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally.

Chakaia Booker

Sonya Clark’s work has been exhibited in over 300 museums and galleries in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas. Since 2006, she has been Chair of Craft /Material Studies in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. Formerly, she was Baldwin-Bascom Professor of Creative Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the recipient of several awards including an Art Prize Grand Jurors Prize in 2014, a Pollock-Krasner grant, a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowship, a Civitella Ranieri Residency, the 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art, a United States Artist Fellowship and an Art Matters grant.

Sonya Clark

Elizabeth Dee is an American gallery owner and co-founder of Independent New York and Independent Brussels. Elizabeth Dee Gallery is located on West 20th Street in Chelsea, and has produced numerous groundbreaking and internationally-recognized exhibitions by such artists as Adrian Piper, Miriam Cahn (debut), Philippe Decrauzat, Derek Jarman, Leo Gabin (debut), Josephine Meckseper (debut), Ryan Trecartin (debut) and Mark Barrow, among others. Previously Dee established X Initiative, a nonprofit consortium of the global art community presenting exhibitions and programming in response to the major philosophical and economic shifts in Contemporary art. She was also recently included in Art + Auction Magazine’s list for the 100 most powerful figures in the art world.

Elizabeth Dee

Valerie Parks is a Detroit painter whose studio practice spans over the past 30 years, since her graduation from Wayne State University. She has participated in many solo and group exhibitions and her work can be found in area and national art collections. Parks worked for thirteen years at the Detroit Institute of Arts in the museum’s Learning and Interpretation Department, where she taught drawing and painting and curated many of the Detroit Public School Exhibitions at the DIA. Valerie Parks is also co-owner of TravelArt Services.

Senghor Reid develops figurative paintings and films that explore the connections between culture, art, science and our interactions with the natural environment. Currently an Artist-in-Residence at Cranbrook Schools, Reid received a BFA from the University of Michigan, a MAT in Art Education from Wayne State University and attended the internationally-recognized Marathon Program at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. He has received several awards, including a Kresge Artist Fellowship in the Visual Arts (2009) and the prestigious Michigan Governor’s Emerging Artist Award. Reid has exhibited in galleries and museums in various parts of the United States and abroad including the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Kentler International Drawing Space, St. Catharine Museum and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Senghor Reid

Kenneth Cosby is a successful screenwriter and member of the Writer's Guild of America. Teaches screenwriting at the University of Southern California. Worked at NBC, taught at NYU, worked as a script consultant in LA and NYC. Currently, an Artist in Residence at the Write Act Repertory Theatre Company in LA.

Sue Marx is an Academy Award-winning producer, director, and writer. She has had a distinguished career in the Detroit area, and began her career as a high school teacher, social researcher, photojournalist and television producer for Channel 4. She is a voting member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and serves on The Michigan Film Office Advisory Council. She received a 1997 Academy Award for “Young at Heart,” and has won many national and international awards which include numerous EMMY’s, CINE Golden Eagles, and major awards from the American Film and Video Festival and the New York Film and Video Festival.

Shaun Nethercott is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Matrix Theatre Company. She developed innovative stage productions and programs, oversaw the restoration of an abandoned building into offices, studio and theatre, and spearheaded partnerships with over 50 community organizations. In it’s 23 year history, Matrix Theatre Company has engaged more than 20,000 people in the creation of 120 new scripts and 135 productions. Dr. Nethercott was named one of Michigan’s first Green Leaders, and has received the Governor’s Art Award, the National Conference of Mayor’s Art Award for work with At Risk Youth, Theresa Maxis award for Social Justice and Wayne County Council of the Arts Educator of the Year.

Shaun S. Nethercott

Brian Rogers is a director, video artist, co-founder and artistic director of The Chocolate Factory Theatre, an award winning theatre for new developments in experimental and multidisciplinary performance in Queens, NY.

Shay Wafer is currently the Executive Director of 651 Arts, a Brooklyn-based non-profit organization dedicated to presenting, supporting and celebrating performing arts of the African Diaspora. She served as director and founder of several theater and repertory companies in L.A.

Carl Craig is a Detroit based techno music producer, and is considered to be one of the most important names in the Detroit second generation of techno producers and DJs. Craig also created his own record label called Planet E Communications, which apart from his own work, has released records by well know techno and house artists such as Kevin Saunderson, Alton Miller and Moodymann. Craig served as co-creator and artistic director for the widely successful Detroit Electronic Music Festival in 2000 and 2001 and returned as artistic director to the festival–now called Movement–in 2010.

Kristy Edmunds is the executive and artistic director at the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, as well as a visual artist, independent filmmaker, a playwright, choreographer and curator. Her expertise is in the development of innovative presentations in contemporary performing arts. She served as consulting artistic director for Park Avenue Armory in New York and was the founding director of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art.

Johnny Evans is a saxophone and harp player with the band, Howling Diablos. The Howling Diablos rocking, blues jam style is well known in Detroit and everywhere they have toured. Since their formation in the ‘90s they have toured and opened for acts including George Clinton’s Parliament Funkadelic, Alice Cooper, Albert Collins, Ben Harper, Hank Williams Jr, as well as headlining their own shows.

George Lewis is a composer, improviser, and performer whose work explores electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, text-sound works and notated and improvisational forms on more than 140 recordings. He is currently a Professor of American Music at Columbia University.

Karen Sherman is an award-winning choreographer, performer, and designer. Her work has been presented internationally in many distinguished museums galleries and performance spaces and has received financial support from the National dance Project, The MAP Fund, the Jerome, Puffin, Bush and McKnight Foundations, as well as commissioning support from NYFA, NYSCA, Walker Art Center and the Southern Theater.