FROM TOP LEFT TO RIGHT:

Katiy Heath, Brooklyn, NY — Fiction: Katiy is an essayist from Saint Joseph, Missouri. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, selected as a contest semi-finalist by American Short Fiction, and a finalist for The Southampton Review Nonfiction Prize. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College where she also worked as the Managing Editor of the program’s literary journal, LUMINA. Katiy‘s writing has been supported by Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), Virginia Quarterly Review (VQR) Summer Workshop, and NES Artist Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland. She currently is a fiction reader for The Drift magazine.

Andy Šlemenda, Northhampton, MA — Visual/Performance Art: Andy is a nonbinary, queer artist from rural Appalachia and based in Western Massachusetts. They roleplay with concepts of transformation and transcendence embedded in corporeality and spirituality. Their artworks challenge perceptions that the unknown or unusual, historically deemed the queer, is evil. Šlemenda rehabilitates these queer-coded representations through site-specific events and sculptures. Šlemenda’s artworks have been exhibited throughout the United States, France, Germany, Turkey and Canada. They received their MFA from New York University Steinhardt and were a Sorbonne-Panthéon Université 1 postgraduate fellow. They have instructed courses on contemporary art theory and studio art at Carnegie Mellon University and NYU. Their work has been included in Viola Kolarov’s On Reading Walter Benjamin as Pure Medium, in conversation with Katherine Sperber in Strange Fire Collective and with Nüans Nüans for Revolver Publishing. They have also organized experimental exhibitions for leading artists and institutions such as Pierre Huyghe, Matthew Barney and Mass MoCA.

Joanna Rakoff, Cambridge, MA — Nonfiction: Joanna is the author of the international bestselling memoir My Salinger Year and the bestselling novel A Fortunate Age, winner of the Goldberg Prize for Fiction and the Elle Readers’ Prize. Rakoff’s books have been translated into twenty languages, and the film adaptation of My Salinger Year opened in theaters worldwide in 2021 and is now streaming (directed by Oscar-nominee Philippe Falardeau, it stars Margaret Qualley as Joanna and Sigourney Weaver as her boss). She has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies from MacDowell, Sewanee, Bread Loaf, Jerome Foundation, Authors’ Guild, PEN, Ragdale Foundation, Art OMI/Ledig House, and Saltonstall; and has taught at Columbia University, Brooklyn College, and Aspen Words. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, O: The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, Elle, Porter, and elsewhere, and her new memoir, The Fifth Passenger, is forthcoming from Little, Brown in 2024.

Nathaniel Wolfgang Parks, Baltimore, MD — Composing: Nathaniel is a Baltimore-based composer and singer whose work has become increasingly obsessed with vulnerability and the beauty found in the mundane. Nathaniel’s music has been performed around the country and has been presented at both the 2017 Society of Composers, Inc. National Conference and the 2018 Society of Composers, Inc. Region VI conference. He was the 2020 recipient of the Otto Ortmann Award in Composition and was a 2018 semi-finalist for the American Prize in Choral Composition – Student Division. As a singer, Nathaniel possesses a deep affinity for choral music and has served many choirs both on the stage and behind the scenes. He is the current Operations Manager for the Washington Master Chorale, the staff tenor 2 at Grace and Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church in Baltimore and was selected as a tenor vocal fellow for the Baltimore Choral Arts Society’s 2021-22 season. Nathaniel holds an M.M. in Composition from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with Michael Hersch and a B.M. in Music Composition from Gardner-Webb University.

Liz Rodda, Austin, TX — Visual Arts: Liz is an interdisciplinary artist whose work examines forces surrounding the contemporary body. Her videos are the result of investing found and recorded images with unintended meanings through contextual shifts. At the center of her objects and installations is a preoccupation with materials that our bodies absorb and translate. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions and screenings, notably the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, David Shelton Gallery, and the Anthology Film Archives. Rodda has been an artist-in-residence at Fountainhead in Miami, Florida and at La Napoule Art Foundation in Mandelieu-La-Napoule, France. Rodda is an Associate Professor at Texas State University, School of Art and Design, where she founded the Expanded Media Area of Specialization, dedicated to time-based media. 

Sarah Aziza, Brooklyn, NY — Nonfiction: Sarah is a Palestinian American writer and translator who splits her time between New York City and the Middle East. Her journalism, essays, poetry, and experimental nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New York Times, Lux Magazine, The Baffler, NPR, The Washington Post, The Rumpus, The Nation, and others. She has been the recipient of a Fulbright grant, a Tin House writer’s residency, and numerous grants from the Pulitzer Center and US Department of Education for her translation and reportage. She is a 2023 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. She is currently working on her first book, a hybrid work of memoir, lyricism, and oral history exploring the intertwined legacies of diaspora, colonialism, and the American dream. In her free time, she can be found taking aimless walks and ogling other peoples’ dogs. 

Kevin Ford, Norwalk, CT — Visual Arts: Kevin is a painter living and working in Connecticut. He has had solo exhibitions at Hesse Flatow, New York, NY, Gallery 12.26, Dallas, TX, Semiose Galerie, Paris, FR, Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY, and at Tops Gallery, Memphis, TN. Ford’s work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at Primary Projects, FL , The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, ME, Kipnz, NY, Reyes Finn, MI, Casey Kaplan Gallery, NY, The Islip Art Museum, NY, IRL, NY, Marquee Projects, NY, Subtitled, NY, Tops Gallery, TN, and at Essex Flowers, NY, among others. He has recently completed an edition of handmade paper pieces in collaboration with Dieu Donné, NY. Ford’s work has been featured in V Magazine, Serendipity Magazine, Scholastic Art Magazine, included in the book Artists II, by Jason Schmidt, published by Steidl, and has been reviewed in ARTFORUM, The New York Times, Burnaway, Two Coats of Paint, and other publications. He is the recipient of a Paul Harper Residency Fellowship for excellence in painting from Yale University, a project Grant from the Carriage House Gallery at the Islip Art Museum in NY, and a Denis Diderot Artist-in-Residence Grant from the Chateau d’Orquevaux Artist Residency. Ford has attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT and at the Chateau d’Orquevaux Artist Residency in Champagne-Ardenne, France. He received his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University and his BFA in Painting from Boston University. Ford is also the founder and director of Fish Island Gallery, an artist-run seasonal alternative exhibition space located on a deserted island in the Long Island Sound off the coast of southwestern Connecticut.