Brenda Zhang (Bz) is a visual artist, designer, organizer, and educator based on unceded Tongva land (so-called Los Angeles). They are a core organizer with the Design As Protest Collective and Dark Matter University and a founding member of SPACE INDUSTRIES. In their practice, they investigate physical and cultural construction as entangled processes and use disciplinary tools of art and architecture to imagine futures beyond settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and cisheteropatriarchy. Bz received a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Visual Arts from Brown University. In their free time, they look for birds and trash in the Los Angeles River.

Victoria Chang’s new book of poetry, Obit , was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Other poetry books are Barbie Chang, The Boss, Salvinia Molesta, and Circle. She also edited an anthology, Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Katherine Min MacDowell Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellowship, a Poetry Society of America Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, a Pushcart, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, and other awards. Her poems have been published in Best American Poetry. Her children’s picture book Is Mommy? (Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster), was illustrated by Marla Frazee and was named a NYT Notable Book.  Her middle grade verse novel, Love, Love was published by Sterling Publishing in 2020. She is a contributing editor of the literary journal, Copper Nickel and a poetry editor at Tupelo Quarterly, as well as a contributing editor for On the Seawall. She is the Program Chair of Antioch University’s low-residency MFA Program, as well as co-coordinates the Idyllwild Writers Week. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and her wiener dogs, Mustard and Ketchup.

Dawit’s directorial debut—a visual accompaniment for Ethiopian-American singer/songwriter Mereba's debut album entitled The Jungle Is The Only Way Out (2019)—earned him a nod for Emerging Director at the 2019 American Black Film Festival. Dawit’s first exhibition, The Eye That Follows (2020), is currently on view at The Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA, through August 16th, 2020.

Gioncarlo Valentine (b. 1990) is an award winning American photographer and writer. Valentine hails from Baltimore City and attended Towson University, in Maryland. Backed by his seven years of social work experience, his work focuses on issues faced by marginalized populations, most often focusing his lens on the experiences of Black/LGBTQIA+ communities.

Gioncarlo was a member of the 2018 class of Skowhegan’s School of Painting and Sculpture. In 2019 he opened his debut solo exhibition, The Soft Fence, at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon. He has had his work collected by the Whitney Museum of American Art, is a regular contributor to The New York Times, and has been commissioned by Wall Street Journal Magazine, Propublica, The New Yorker, Esquire, Vogue, and Newsweek among many others. 

Diane Cook is the author of the novel, The New Wilderness, currently nominated for a Booker Prize, and the story collection, Man V. Nature, which was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the Believer Book Award, and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s, Tin House, Granta, and other publications, and her stories have been included in the anthologies Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She is a former producer for the radio program This American Life, and was the recipient of a 2016 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, daughter and son.

Lydia Kiesling is the author of The Golden State, a 2018 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree, and a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She is a contributing editor at The Millions and her writing has appeared at outlets including The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker online, The Cut, and The Guardian.

Elise R. Peterson is a multimedia storyteller with a focus in visual arts, community building and writing currently based in Los Angeles, CA. Writing clips have appeared in Believer Magazine, Adult, PAPER MAGAZINE, ELLE, LENNY LETTER, and NERVE among others. Her multidisciplinary visual work is informed by the past, reimagined in the framework of the evolving notions of technology, intimacy and cross-generational narratives. Socially, it is her aim to continue to use art as a platform for social justice while making art accessible for all through exhibitions of public work and beyond. She has illustrated two children's books: How Mamas Love Their Babies, Feminist Press, and The Nightlife of Jacuzzi Gasket, Dottir Press. Elise hosted MANE, a online video series highlighting the intersection of culture and hair as told through the narratives of women via Now This News. She also founded and co-hosts Cool Moms: a bi-weekly podcast highlighting women who make their passions a priority. Elise continues to illuminate marginalized narratives through a limitless practice in storytelling.

Naima Green’s exhibit Brief & Drenching is on view at Fotografiksa until February 2021, and Jenna Wortham’s Black Futures, co-edited by Kimberly Drew, will be published by Penguin Random House in December 2020.

For more virtual arts programming please visit https://www.20summers.org

Jenna Wortham is an award-winning journalist for the New York Times and host of the culture podcast "Still Processing." A graduate of the University of Virginia, she worked at Wired before joining the Times in 2008 and more recently, the New York Times Magazine. Wortham is an important voice on digital culture and new technologies, and is a co-author of “Black Futures” with Kimberly Drew, coming out via One World 2020.

Jenna Wortham on her current project:  I am working on a collection of linked essays that treat finding the body as a neo-noir thriller as an entry point, and then broadens out into a larger concentric series of inquiries and investigations about how the modern black female queer body functions in space and time. The body is a container for the self, and a vessel for experiences. My book seeks answers to the questions: What does it mean to participate in a body? To unmake and make one while inside one? My book is an investigation on the formation of identity, a blueprint for how to keep it, especially in our newly digitized lives. It’s about discovering the thrill of architecting desire outside of patriarchy, living in blackness and the freedom of exploring life beyond any earth-bound paradigm. I think about this work as a ritual, an unlearning, an unbecoming as a means to unfold. An exorcism in reverse. A repossession. It is a story about identity, and body consciousness, the liminal space between our masculine and feminine sides, digital homogeneity, intimacy and lust.

Naima Green is an artist and educator currently living between Brooklyn, NY and Mexico City, Mexico. She holds an MFA in Photography from ICP–Bard, an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a BA from Barnard College. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Smart Museum of Art, MASS MoCA, International Center of Photography, Houston Center for Photography, Bronx Museum, BRIC, ltd los angeles, Gallery 102, Gracie Mansion Conservancy, Shoot the Lobster, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Arsenal Gallery. Green has been an artist-in-residence at Recess, Mass MoCA, Pocoapoco, Bronx Museum, Vermont Studio Center, and is a recipient of the Myers Art Prize at Columbia University.

Her works are in the collections of MoMA Library, the International Center of Photography Library, Decker Library at MICA, National Gallery of Art, Leslie-Lohman Museum, Teachers College, Columbia University, and the Barnard College Library.

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AUTHOR BIO:
Alaya Dawn Johnson is an award-winning author of speculative fiction for adults and young adults. Her most recent novel, Trouble the Saints, is out from Tor as of July 2020. Her short story collection, Reconstruction, is forthcoming from Small Beer Press in November of 2020. She publishes a monthly newsletter via TinyLetter, which you can subscribe to here. It features writing advice, observations of life and eating in Mexico, and, of course, the latest news of her publications.

FROM THE PUBLISHER:
Butter Honey Pig Bread is a story of choices and their consequences, of motherhood, of the malleable line between the spirit and the mind, of finding new homes and mending old ones, of voracious appetites, of queer love, of friendship, faith, and above all, family.

Francesca Ekwuyasi's debut novel tells the interwoven stories of twin sisters, Kehinde and Taiye, and their mother, Kambirinachi. Kambirinachi feels she was born an Ogbanje, a spirit that plagues families with misfortune by dying in childhood to cause its mother misery. She believes that she has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family and now lives in fear of the consequences of that decision.

Some of Kambirinachi's worst fears come true when her daughter, Kehinde, experiences a devasting childhood trauma that causes the family to fracture in seemingly irreversible ways. As soon as she's of age, Kehinde moves away and cuts contact with her twin sister and mother. Alone in Montreal, she struggles to find ways to heal while building a life of her own. Meanwhile, Taiye, plagued by guilt for what happened to her sister, flees to London and attempts to numb the loss of the relationship with her twin through reckless hedonism.

Now, after more than a decade of living apart, Taiye and Kehinde have returned home to Lagos to visit their mother. It is here that the three women must face each other and address the wounds of the past if they are to reconcile and move forward.

AUTHOR BIO:
Francesca Ekwuyasi is a writer, artist, and filmmaker born in Lagos, Nigeria. Her work explores themes of faith, family, queerness, consumption, loneliness, and belonging. Francesca's writing has been published in Winter Tangerine Review, Brittle Paper, Transition Magazine, the Malahat Review, Visual Art News, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and GUTS magazine. Her story Ọrun is Heaven was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize. Her forthcoming debut novel, Butter Honey Pig Bread will be available October 2020 through Arsenal Pulp Press. Supported through the National Film Board's Film Maker's Assistance Program and the Fabienne Colas Foundation, Francesca's short documentary Black + Belonging has screened in festivals Halifax, Toronto, and Montreal.

Dr. David Porter is the Director of Cell Therapy and Transplantation at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. He has been recognized by America’s Top Doctors 2007, 2008, 2010-2018, by Best Doctors in America 2009 - 2018, and Philadelphia magazine’s annual Top Docs issues, 2004 -2020. He is an expert in blood cancer, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), and leukemia.

Dr. Josh Bilenker received his M.D. from The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and his A.B. from Princeton, awarded summa cum laude in English. Dr. Bilenker was a Medical Officer in the Office of Oncology Drug Products at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for two years. While at the FDA, he conducted clinical reviews of IND-stage and licensed biologic oncology products. Prior to joining the FDA, Dr. Bilenker trained at the University of Pennsylvania in internal medicine and medical oncology, earning board certification in these specialties. Dr. Bilenker is CEO of Loxo Oncology at Lilly, serves as a director of Gossamer Bio, and is also a Board Member of the NCCN Foundation and of BioEnterprise.

Interspersed throughout the discussion are readings from Little Big Bully and Apple: (skin to the Core).

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Heid E. Erdrich is the author of seven collections of poetry. Her writing has won fellowships and awards from the National Poetry Series, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Bush Foundation, Loft Literary Center, First People’s Fund, and other honors. She has twice won a Minnesota Book Award for poetry. Heid edited the 2018 anthology New Poets of Native Nations from Graywolf Press (2018). Heid grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota and is Ojibwe enrolled at Turtle Mountain.

Eric Gansworth,  Sˑha-weñ na-saeˀ, (Onondaga, Eel Clan) is a writer and visual artist, born and raised at Tuscarora Nation. The author of twelve books, he has been widely published and has had numerous solo and group exhibitions. Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius College, he has also been an NEH Distinguished Visiting Professor at Colgate University. Winner of a PEN Oakland Award and American Book Award, he is currently Longlisted for the National Book Award. Gansworth’s work has been also supported by the Library of Congress, the Saltonstall and Lannan Foundations, the Arne Nixon Center, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Seaside Institute.

Andrea Carlson is a visual artist currently living in Chicago, Illinois. Through painting and drawing, Carlson cites entangled cultural narratives and institutional authority relating to objects based on the merit of possession and display. Current research activities include Indigenous Futurism and assimilation metaphors in film. Her work has been acquired by institutions such as the British Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the National Gallery of Canada. Carlson was a 2008 McKnight Fellow and a 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors grant recipient. 

Rion Amilcar Scott is the author of the story collection, The World Doesn’t Require You (Norton/Liveright, August 2019), a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. His debut story collection, Insurrections (University Press of Kentucky, 2016), was awarded the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His work has been published in journals such as The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, Crab Orchard Review, and The Rumpus, among others.

Recorded at the Hawthorne barn on June 8, 2019 by Twenty Summers. All Rights Reserved.

J.T. Rogers’s plays include Oslo, Blood and Gifts, The Overwhelming, White People, and Madagascar. For Oslo he won the Tony, New York Critics, Outer Critics, Drama Desk, Drama League, Lortel, and Obie awards. As one of the playwrights for the Tricycle Theatre of London’s The Great Game: Afghanistan he was nominated for an Olivier Award. His works have been staged throughout the United States and in Germany, Canada, Australia, and Israel. He is a Guggenheim fellow and has received three NYFA fellowships in playwriting. Rogers is a member of the Dramatist Guild, where he is a founding board member of the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund. He is an alum of New Dramatists and holds an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a senior vice president for Public Affairs at Starbucks and the executive producer of the company’s social impact media initiatives. Prior to joining Starbucks in 2015, Rajiv was a senior correspondent and associate editor of The Washington Post, where he worked for two decades. During his newspaper career, he reported from more than three dozen countries and was bureau chief in Baghdad, Cairo and Southeast Asia. He also served as the Post’s national editor and as an assistant managing editor. In 2014, he and Howard Schultz wrote the bestselling book, "For Love of Country: What Our Veterans Can Teach Us About Citizenship, Heroism and Sacrifice." He also is the author of two other bestselling books: "Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan" and "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone," which was named one of the 10 best books of 2007 by The New York Times and inspired the movie Green Zone. He is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area and a graduate of Stanford University.

Robert Pinsky‘s recent book is At the Foundling Hospital, nominated for the Nation Book Critics Award in poetry. As Poet Laureate of the United States (1997-2000), he founded the Favorite Poem Project, featuring the videos at www.favoritepoem.org. His best-selling translation The Inferno of Dante received the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Harold Morton Landon translation prize. His other awards include the Lenore Marshall Prize, the Korean Manhae Prize, the Italian Premio Capri and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pen American Center. He performs with pianist Laurence Hobgood on CDs PoemJazz and House Hour, from Circumstantial Productions.

Monica Youn is the author of Blackacre (Graywolf Press 2016), which was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Award, longlisted for the National Book Award, and named one of the best poetry books of 2016 by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and BuzzFeed. Her previous book Ignatz(Four Way Books 2010) was a finalist for the National Book Award. A former lawyer, she currently teaches at Princeton University and in the Sarah Lawrence and Columbia University MFA programs.

Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of the poetry collections Once Removed, Approaching Ice, Interpretive Work and the forthcoming Toward Antarctica. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, West Branch, Orion and her awards include a Stegner Fellowship and the Audre Lorde Prize. Founder and editor-in-chief of Broadsided Press, she lives on Cape Cod, works as a naturalist locally as well as on ships around the globe, and teaches creative writing at Brandeis University.

We were pleased to present a theatrical reading of Pollock on June 16, 2018, featuring the original actors, Jim Fletcher and Birgit Huppuch, in Provincetown’s Hawthorne Barn as part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival. French playwright Fabrice Melquiot's drama, translated into English by Kenneth Casler and Miriam Heard, and directed by Paul Desvaux, illuminates the profound connection between the brilliant madness of Jackson Pollock and his marriage to artist Lee Krasner, exploring the charged space between his genius and her spirit, his inhibitions and her frustrations. It was our honor to shine a spotlight on these two important artists, both of whom spent time in the Hawthorne Barn.

This performance was made possible through the support of The Cultural Services of the French Embassy, which promotes the best of French arts, literature, cinema, digital innovation, language, and higher education across the U.S.

Michael Cunningham is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours (winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize), The Snow Queen, Specimen Days, and By Nightfall, as well as the nonfiction book Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown. His most recent book is A Wild Swan and Other Tales (illustrated by Yuko Shimizu). He is a senior lecturer at Yale and lives in New York.

Daniel Mendelsohn is an internationally bestselling author, critic, essayist, and translator. His books include An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic (2017), shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize (U.K.) and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Newsday, Library Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, and Kirkus, and The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (2006), which won the National Books Critics Circle Award and the National Jewish Book Award in the United States and the Prix Médicis in France, among many other honors. A member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Association, he teaches literature at Bard College.

The talented best friends’ debut, Young, released in 2017, was praised as a “memorable album” in a rave review by critic Bob Boilen. In a vocal style that is minimalist yet rich in melody, they deliver songs of connection and tension, on the depths of love and the challenges of family.

Some two decades after his autobiographical documentary Unzipped won him countless fans and a prize or two, Mizrahi has since hosted his eponymous TV show, is working on his third book, has directed two operas, and performs cabaret in venues as prestigious as Café Carlyle and Joe's Pub. Alan Cumming is a Tony Award–winning actor whose own highly versatile talents have landed him in films with everyone from Stanley Kubrick to the Spice Girls, onstage with Jay Z and Liza, as host of the Tony Awards, and even at the top of the New York Times Bestseller List for his memoir, Not My Father's Son.

You can watch the full video of this event and more at https://www.20summers.org/videos.

You can watch the full video of this event and more at https://www.20summers.org/videos.