Leila Mottley
Satya Hawley
Matilda the Musical
Student and Alumni News L I T ERA RY A RTS
VISUAL ART
• Leila Mottley (’19) appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers to celebrate the success of her novel Nightcrawling, an Oprah’s Book Club Pick and New York Times best seller. Nightcrawling was also longlisted for the Booker Prize, making Leila the youngest person ever to be included on this prestigious list.
• Through her work with Twinwalls Mural Company, Lisa Max (’20) painted the decorative walls for a new San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibition entitled “New Work: Toyin Ojih Odutola.” As this is an integral part of the exhibit, Lisa received wall text credit at SFMOMA.
• Daisha Williams (’23), an intern at the Post News Group, wrote “Oakland Youth Rally in Support of Roe v. Wade,” covering the OSA student-led protest walk to Oakland’s City Hall. NNPA Newswire/BlackPressUSA picked up the story for national publication.
• OSA’s 2022 valedictorian, Khoa Sands, is attending Princeton University to study history. During his senior year at OSA, he created and facilitated a course on the “History of Modern Geopolitics: Conflict in Context” that helped students understand and critically examine current events and conflicts in the world today.
T H EAT R E • Students performed Every 28 Hours, a play written by students and directed by alumna Tavia Percia (‘11), who now co-chairs the Theatre Department at OSA. The play details the shared and contested 2015 statistic, “Every 28 hours, a Black person is killed in the US,” and is performed in honor of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Jacob Blake.
MEDIA ARTS
Every 28 Hours
• Makiah Hiley (’23) won a Bronze Medal for playwriting at the 2022 NAACP National Youth Convention. At the convention, Lupita Nyong’o, star of Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, surprised 40 students on stage, awarding each one with a $10,000 scholarship.
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• Media Arts students collaborated with several sub-pathways throughout the year, notably creating powerful digital stories that accompanied Visual Art students’ self portraits at OSA’s spring fundraiser, Heart of Oakland. • Students documented a range of artistic accomplishments at OSA, from recording theatre performances like Twelfth Night, or What You Will, to photographing Vocal Rush, OSA’s award-winning a cappella group, to recording Instrumental Music students.
