OCTOBER @ MILLAY ARTS
FROM TOP LEFT TO RIGHT:
Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Washington, DC — Fiction
I am a fiction writer and scholar born and raised in Harlem, New York. I am the author of three books: the short story collection, Blue Talk and Love (2015), winner of the Judith Markowitz Award for Fiction from Lambda Literary; a scholarly book, The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora (2021), a New Black Studies Series selection from University of Illinois Press; and the forthcoming novel Big Girl (W.W. Norton/ Liveright 2022). I hold a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Temple University, and a B.A. in Afro-American Studies from Smith College. In my fiction, I explore the intellectual, emotional, and bodily lives of young Black women through voice, music, and hip-hop inflected magical realist techniques. My short stories have appeared in Best New Writing, Kenyon Review, American Fiction: Best New Stories, TriQuarterly, Feminist Studies, All About Skin: Short Stories by Award-Winning Women Writers of Color, and others. My fiction has earned the Charles Johnson Fiction Award, the Glenna Luschei Fiction Award, the James Baldwin Memorial Playwriting Award, the 2021 Pride Index National Arts and Culture award, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The Yaddo Colony, the Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat, Lambda Literary, the Publishing Triangle, and the Center for Fiction in New York City, where I received an inaugural Emerging Writers Fellowship in 2011.
My scholarly writing explores the connections between sexuality, identity, and creative practice in contemporary African Diaspora literatures and cultures, with a focus on Black queer and feminist literature. My academic and critical writing has been published in Feminist Studies, American Literary History, Black Futures, Teaching Black, American Quarterly, College Literature, Oxford African American Resource Center, Palimpsest: Journal of Women, Gender and the Black International, The Scholar and Feminist, Women’s Studies, The Rumpus, BET.com, Ebony.com, TheRoot.com, Ms. Magazine online, The Feminist Wire, New York Magazine’s The Cut, and many others. My scholarly research in Black feminist, queer, and Women of Color Feminist literature has earned support from the Mellon-Mays Foundation, the Social Sciences Research Council, Williams College, Rutgers University, Duke University, the American Academy of University Women, and the Institute for Citizens and Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation). I see this work as inseparable from my fiction, which explores similar themes of gender, sexuality, and embodiment in contemporary marginalized lives.
I am currently Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University, where I teach courses in African American poetry and poetics, Black queer and feminist literatures, and creative writing.
Daniel Shieh, New York, NY - Visual Arts
I am a Taiwanese-born artist based in New York City. I create interactive artworks that alter the power dynamics between participants. My installations have been commissioned by I-Park Foundation, Franconia Sculpture Park, and Josephine Sculpture Park. I have been invited as an artist in residence to the Cité Internationale des Arts, Wassaic Project, ACRE, Fountainhead, LMCC Arts Center, Anderson Ranch, and NARS. I received an MDes degree in Art, Design, and the Public Domain at Harvard Graduate School of Design. I learned about Millay Colony through artist alumni. I am drawn to the close-knit cohort that this residency offers. To be in conversation with other artists thinking about different topics and hearing their point of view is exciting to me, because the residency becomes a mutual learning experience of how to different kinds of work. My project is about the American anthem and how it can or cannot represent its people, and any project with a focus on representation requires conversations with others in its creation process.
Matthew Jonathan Ricketts, Brooklyn, NY — Composing
Matthew is a Canadian composer currently based in New York City. His music moves from extremes of presence and absence, from clamor to quietude, at once reticent and flamboyant. Matthew’s music has been called “lyrical, contrapuntal, rhythmically complex and highly nuanced” (The American Academy of Arts and Letters) and is noted for his “effervescent and at times prickly sounds,” “hypnotically churning exploration of melody” (ICareIfYouListen) as well as its “tart harmonies and perky sputterings” (The New York Times). He is a 2020 Gaudeamus Award nominee and a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow.
His works have been performed internationally by JACK Quartet, the Fromm Players, Quatuor Bozzini, the Chiara String Quartet; Yarn/Wire, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM), Wet Ink, TAK, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, the Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra (Robert Spano, cond.), Esprit Orchestra (Alex Pauk, cond.), the Minnesota Orchestra (Osmo Vänskä, cond.) the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (Kent Nagano, cond.) and the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg.
In 2018 Ricketts’ multilingual opera Chaakapesh: The Trickster’s Quest (written with Cree playwright Tomson Highway) opened the Montreal Symphony’s 84th season to great acclaim and went on to tour Indigenous communities throughout Québec. Matthew is the recipient of fellowships from Civitella Ranieri (2021), The American Academy of Arts and Letters (2020 Charles Ives Fellowship), MacDowell (2019), Tanglewood (2018 Elliott Carter Memorial Fellowship) and the Aspen Music Festival (2017), a 2013 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and eight prizes in the SOCAN Foundation’s Awards for Young Composers.
Active as a writer as well as a composer, Matthew has published articles, reviews, poetry and libretti, and has worked closely with authors, poets and lyricists Mark Campbell, Royce Vavrek, Lauren J. Rogener, Paul Legault, Christian Schlegel, Klara du Plessis and Tomson Highway on multiple collaborative projects. Upcoming projects include a commission from the Library of Congress (Koussevitzky Music Foundation) for Duo/Axis, a new orchestral work for the OSM (2022-2023) and an operatic adaptation of Robert Service’s iconic poem The Cremation of Sam McGee with Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist Royce Vavrek. Matthew holds degrees in music composition and theory from McGill University’s Schulich School of Music (B.Mus. 2009) and Columbia University (DMA 2017). Matthew was Composer-Collaborator-In-Residence at East Carolina University from 2016-2018 and served as Core Lecturer at Columbia University from 2017-2020.
Becca Lowry, Branford, CT — Visual Art
I grew up in Connecticut surrounded by makers: My father was a carpenter, my mother a jeweler who owned a craft gallery, and my older brother left high school to make wooden boats. Even my grandmother, who was a pediatrician by training, was, by the time I came into the world, farming her grandparents’ land. My brother made boats from my father’s scrap lumber; I raided the pile for canvas upon which to paint. I learned pottery, stained glass, sewing, welding, from family and family friends and filled lunch and free periods in High School with as many art courses as I was allowed. But, perhaps because of the anxiety that came from watching both of my parents struggle to make a living, I eschewed an interest in art school in favor of a more practical path, earning a bachelor’s degree in Economics and a certificate in African Studies from Smith College in 2002. I then worked for ten years as a research manager and data scientist for field research projects exploring economic and health inequalities in the developing world. This work brought me to Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique, the Philippines, and beyond, which greatly influenced my already global worldview and deepened my appreciation for craft.
Since returning to artmaking in 2012, my work has been acquired by a number of prestigious private collections and the collection of Gateway Community College in New Haven, CT. My work has been exhibited throughout New England, including at Art Miami with David Findlay Gallery, at Select Fair with Tiger Strikes Asteroid NY, and at Galerie Zurcher in NYC in 2015, at Volta NYC with Fred Giampietro Gallery in 2016, at Klowden Mann in Los Angeles in 2018, and at Greene Naftali in NYC in 2021. A review of my work appeared in Artforum in 2015 and my work was featured in New American Paintings in 2017.
Ly Tran, Ridgewood, NY — Fiction
Ly graduated from Columbia University with a degree in creative writing and linguistics. She has received fellowships from MacDowell, Art Omi, Yaddo, and Millay Arts. House of Sticks is her first book.
Preeti Parikh, Blue Ash, OH — Poetry
Preeti is an Indian American poet and essayist. With a past educational background in medicine and a recent MFA from The Rainier Writing Workshop, she is currently working on a book-length poetry collection. Preeti’s poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in Nonwhite and Woman, Kweli Journal, Literary Mama, Ruminate Magazine, and elsewhere. She is an alumna of the AWP Writer to Writer Program and the Tin House Winter Workshop and has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Pacific Lutheran University. Preeti was a finalist for the 2019 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize, and her work was nominated for Best New Poets 2021. Born and raised in India, she now lives with her family in a multigenerational household in Ohio. Preeti volunteers as a staff reader for The Maine Review and she has recently guest-edited poetry for Another Chicago Magazine as well as served on the social media team for the 2021 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Besides working as a freelancer, she continues to explore her interests in indigo dyeing, textile arts, and image-text work.
Mindy Uhrlaub, San Anselmo, CA – Fiction
Mindy has traveled twice with Human Rights Watch and Eve Ensler’s V-Day to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has taken testimony of rape survivors and child soldiers. Her interest in preventing the pillage of resources in Congo has also led her to visit Virunga National Park and to sit on the committee for Human Rights Watch’s Voices for Justice Dinner.
Prior to writing Unnatural Resources, Uhrlaub wrote and produced STALLED, a feature-length film (distributed by Concorde New Horizons). She was also a music reviewer and copy editor for Denver’s PULP magazine. In addition, Mindy plays keyboards in 40th Day, a band that has toured with Kansas and performed with groups like The Smashing Pumpkins. She is a contributing author in the anthologies Mamas Write and She’s Got This (named 2019 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Finalist, Kindle Book Awards Reader’s Choice, and Best Book Awards Finalist).
Since the publication of her debut novel in November of 2020, Uhrlaub has had many teaching opportunities. At a video game company, she lectured designers on creating the female hero. Mindy also taught several high school classes about following the non-traditional career path. Uhrlaub has spoken several times at San Francisco’s Litquake. In the past nine months, Mindy has given book talks to: Human Rights Watch, The Weinberg Newton Gallery, The Larkspur Library, The San Anselmo Public Library, Barbara’s Bookstore, Book Passage, and has been featured on The Bonkers Brit podcast. Her novel, Unnatural Resources, was published in November of 2020, by The Permanent Press after receiving a starred review from The Library Journal. Uhrlaub’s debut novel won the 2021 NYC Big Book Award for the Cultural Heritage category.