POETS
Kenzie Allen (Twitter, Instagram, Website)is a poet and multimodal artist. She is the recipient of a James Welch Award for Indigenous Poets from Poetry Northwest, a 92NY Discovery Award, and fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Aspen Writers’ Foundation, and In-Na-Po. Her work has been featured in Boston Review, Narrative Magazine, The Paris Review Daily, Poetry Magazine, and other venues. Born in West Texas, she currently teaches at York University in Toronto. She is a descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin.
jessamyn duckwall (Instagram, Website) lives and works in Oregon. She is an MFA candidate at Portland State University and is the author of the chapbook Sylvia sings in the garden. She currently serves as Co-Editor in Chief at The Portland Review. Her work has appeared in Josephine Quarterly, Kithe Journal, Pithead Chapel, and other publications.
Jenny Grassl’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Boston Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Laurel Review, Radar Poetry, The Massachusetts Review, Lana Turner, Bennington Review, Puerto del Sol, and other journals. Her work was published in a National Poetry Month feature of Iowa Review. Tupelo Press selected her manuscript Deer Woman In The Dining Room as a runner-up for its July open reading in 2021. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her poems were featured in a Best of American Poetry blog.
Amy Miller’s (Twitter, Instagram, Website) Astronauts won the 2022 Chad Walsh Chapbook Prize from Beloit Poetry Journal, and her full-length collection The Trouble with New England Girls won the 2017 Louis Award from Concrete Wolf Press. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Copper Nickel, Narrative, RHINO, Terrain, Tupelo Quarterly, and ZYZZYVA. She received a 2021 Oregon Literary Fellowship and lives in Ashland, Oregon.
Abi Pollokoff (Twitter, Instagram, Website) is a Seattle-based writer, editor, and book artist with work found in Palette Poetry, The Seventh Wave, EcoTheo, Denver Quarterly, and Guernica, among others. Her work has been supported by organizations including the Jack Straw Cultural Center and Hugo House. Currently, Abi is the managing editor for Poetry Northwest Editions and a production editor at Girl Friday Productions. She received her MFA from the University of Washington. Find her at abipollokoff.com.
Visual Artists
Nicholas Galanin (Artist Website, Instagram, Twitter) (b. 1979) is a Tlingit/Unangax̂/ Multi-Disciplinary Artist. His work engages contemporary culture from his perspective rooted in connection to land. He embeds incisive observation into his work, investigating intersections of culture and concept in form, image and sound. Galanin's works embody critical thought as vessels of knowledge, culture and technology - inherently political, generous, unflinching, and poetic. Galanin engages past, present and future to expose intentionally obscured collective memory and barriers to the acquisition of knowledge. His works critique commodification of culture, while contributing to the continuum of Tlingit art. Galanin employs materials and processes that expand dialogue on Indigenous artistic production, and how culture can be carried. His work is in numerous public and private collections and exhibited worldwide. Galanin apprenticed with master carvers, earned his BFA at London Guildhall University, and his MFA at Massey University, he lives and works with his family in Sitka, Alaska.
Pamela Lawton’s (Artist Website) 2019-20 “Multisensory Drawing In Siena” project awarded her a U.S. Fulbright Scholar grant at the Siena Art Institute in Italy. Propelling her work into tactile realms, she derived inspiration from her work with low and no-vision students at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,expanding her teaching practice to the Uffizi Galleries, the Benaki Museum (Athens) and the Palazzo Strozzi. Collaborations with poets include Sweet-voiced [mutilated] Papyrus by Anne Waldman (Spyuyten Duyvil Press, 2015); Walking After Midnight by Bill Kushner (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2011); and A Place In the Sun by Lewis Warsh (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2010),. Solo shows include the Galeria Nacional, Costa Rica, the Galeria Isabel Ignacio, Spain, the Conde Nast Building, and 180 Maiden Lane, New York. Lawton was an artist-in-residence at the World Trade Center through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. While teaching at New School University, she created a study abroad class in Sri Lanka. She teaches at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at Manhattanville College.
Angus McEwan (Artist Website, Social Media Links) is an international award-winning painter of watercolour realism and the relationship of time and its effect on material objects. Angus is an elected member of many art societies, including the world’s oldest, the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS); the Australian watercolour Society (AWI); the National watercolour Society, USA (NWS); The Royal Scottish Society of watercolours (RSW); the International Masters of Watercolour Association, China (IMWA); the Royal Glasgow Institute (RGI) and the San Diego Watercolour Society (SDWS). In 2022 Angus was elected President of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours. A brand ambassador for Daniel Smith paints, Angus has won prizes in many countries, and is highly sought after for workshops and Demonstrations Internationally (in person) as well as online. He has work in many private and public collections around the globe and has been a judge for many international competitions, including President of the jury (2022) for Marche d’Aqua, Italy, John Constable Prize in Lima, Peru, the Abu Rawash Prize, Egypt, IMWA competitions, China, as well as numerous other International watercolour competitions.
Robert Minervini (Artist Website) is an artist working in painting, mural painting, printmaking, and site-specific public art. His work examines spatial environments and notions of utopia in large-scale cityscapes, landscapes, and still-life arrangements. He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and his BFA from Tyler School of Art. His work has been exhibited nationally, including solo shows with Hirschl & Adler Modern, NYC; Edward Cella Gallery, LA; Rena Bransten Gallery, SF; as well as group and two-person exhibitions with the San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, Torrance Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Palo Alto Art Center, Schneider Museum of Art, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. He is a recipient of the Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship by the San Francisco Foundation, and the Carmela Corso Scholarship by Tyler School of Art. He has completed multiple murals and public art commissions nationally including through the San Francisco Arts Commission, The Alameda County Arts Commission, and the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. He has been a resident artist at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, the Headlands Center of the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. His art has been published in New American Paintings (No. 91 and No. 109), Beautiful Decay, and Mural Art: Large Scale Art from Walls around the World. Minervini’s work has been reviewed in the LA Times,Modern Painters, San Francisco Chronicle, Art ltd., and featured in ArtWeek LA, 7x7 Magazine, and The Huffington Post. His work is in the collections of the San Jose Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the City and County of San Francisco, and many private and corporate collections. He currently lives and works in Florence, Italy.
Thank you to the Art Institute of Chicago.