ALUMNI NEWS FALL 2020
SAM ADAM’s (18) new piece, Movements (for us and them), was recorded by the Australian Chamber Orchestra and directed by Richard Tognetti. DAVID ADJMI’s (06,20) new book, Lot Six: A Memoir, came out on June 23 from Harper. OPHIR AGASSI’s (11) exhibition, One to the Next, was at The Painting Center in NYC through September 26. AYAD AKHTAR’s (00,15) new novel Homeland Elegies was released on September 15 from Little Brown. He participated in a virtual event as part of PEN America’s PEN Out Loud series and was also recently appointed as president of PEN America.
MARIANNE BARCELLONA’s (06) exhibition, What Is Left: Tenuous Survivals, is at First Street Gallery in NYC through October 3. JEAN BUESCHER BARTLETT (93,04) has work in two exhibitions through December. The Collective Impulse is at the Crooked Tree Arts Center in Petoskey, MI, and the 15th Anniversary Exhibition is at the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center. JAN BEATTY’s (93,97,00) poem, My Father Disappears Into Flowers, was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye for the New York Times Magazine on August 16. Her sixth book, The Body Wars, was released by the University of Pittsburgh Press in September, and her memoir, American Bastard, won the Red Hen Nonfiction Prize and will be published in 2021.
FRANCES ASHFORTH (18) had five large monotypes included in the show, Mirage: Water, Energy & Creativity in the Great Basin, at the Boise Art Museum through February 24.
HEATHER BENTZ’s (17) first children’s book, The Runaway Sock, was released in May.
HOWARD AXELROD’s (01,11,15) new book, The Stars in Our Pockets, was published by Beacon Press in January.
BARBARA BOSWORTH (19) made a new artist book with Dust Collective, titled From Where the Sun Now Stands.
CINDY BERNARD (17) was the recipient of a Pollock Krasner grant.
Seventeen of PRILLA S. BRACKETT’s MATTHEW BAKER’s (16) new (98) 2019 monoprint/mixed media collection, Why Visit America: works were in Natural Attraction, a fiveStories, was published by Henry Holt person show at Brickbottom Gallery in & Company on August 4. Somerville, MA.
SUSAN BRIANTE’s (19) book, Defacing the Monument, essays on immigration, aesthetics, and the state, was published by Noemi Press in August. TRINE BUMILLER (19) has work in the group exhibition, The Walls Between Us, at the Center for Visual Art in Denver, CO, through October 17, and two paintings from her Denali Series are currently installed at Lafayette City Hall, CO. In September, her solo exhibition, Waterline, was at a.topos, a curatorial collective in Venice, Italy. LESLIE KIRK CAMPBELL’s (18) short fiction collection, The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs & Other Stories, won the 2020 Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction and will be published on February 1. In addition, the title story will be published in Ploughshares Solos Fall 2021. CHARLES CANTRELL’s (99) full-length book of poetry, Wild Wreckage, was published by Cervena Barva Press (Boston). Work from ANDRÉE CARTER’s (19) Menorca Series was accepted into the 35th Annual Juried Art Exhibition at the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster, CA, and was on display through June 28. Her painting, Secret Orange, is part of
the 4th Biennial Visual Impressions at Ryan James Fine Arts in Kirkland, WA, through October. Her painting, Something Tribal 8H10J, is currently in the Los Angeles Art Association’s Gleaming Apollo online show. Two of her paintings were accepted into Sylvia White’s First Annual Summer Juried Show at realART in Agoura Hills, CA, through August. SHARON CHARDE’s (20) new book, I Am Not A Juvenile Delinquent: How Poetry Changed A Group of At-Risk Girls, was published by Mango in June. ANDREA CLEARFIELD (05,08,14,17) hosted a virtual 34-Year Anniversary Zalon on September 20. The program featured Tibetan, Chinese, Sufi, and Argentine music; classical guitar; violin; piano; new chamber music; and a swing band. Virtual Zalon events will continue through April 2021. ELISABETH CONDON (18) has work in the exhibition Art Off Screen, an international exhibition of artwork and performances in outward-facing locations, curated by Neumeraki Projects. MELANIE CONROY-GOLDMAN’s (05) novel, The Likely World, was published by Red Hen Press on August 4. The New Wilderness by DIANE COOK (15), published by Harper on August 11, was named to the shortlist for the 2020 Booker Prize.
In January, JACOB COOPER’s (14,18) piece, Stabat Mater Dolorosa, was released by The String Orchestra of Brooklyn and was included in NPR Music’s Top Ten Albums of January. His new album, Terrain, came out on New Amsterdam Records in July. KIA CORTHRON (01) is the recipient of the 2020 Flora Roberts Award. The award is administered by the Dramatists Guild Foundation and is presented annually to a dramatist in recognition of distinguished work in the theatre and to encourage the continuation of that work. CATHERINE COURTENAYE’s (91) exhibition of new paintings, Avian Witness, was at the Gallatin River Gallery in Big Sky, MT, through September 26. In March, MEEHAN CRIST (08) wrote about coronavirus and climate for The New York Times, as well as the ethics of having children in a time of climate crisis for The London Review of Books. The latter was commissioned as part of their Winter Lecture series. REBECCA DOUGHTY (06) had new paintings at The Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown, MA, in August. She also has work in the group exhibition Clay Has Its Say: Narrative Ceramics at Concord Art through December 13.
Fall 2020 Ucross Residents left to right: PAT SONNINO, ONYINYE IHEZUKWU, ANDY AKIHO, KIRSTEN STOLLE.
Two of ELIZABETH DUFFY’s (20) guard tower embroidery pieces were included in the Miss Democracy exhibit at Planthouse Gallery in June. She donated any proceeds from art sales to the Equal Justice Initiative. NINA ELDER (17,20) has work in the group exhibition, Trinity: Reflections on the Bomb at the Albuquerque Museum. She created two public artworks that utilize stream of consciousness list-making as a way to think through categories of information and concepts. What is permanent? has been painted at the Nature, Environment, Science and Technology (NEST) Studio For the Arts at the CU Boulder campus, and What is transitory? has been painted at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder, CO. She accepted contributions from the public for these pieces. SUSAN ENGLISH’s (18) new works on paper were at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts in Bridgehampton, NY, through July 6. YALITZA FERRERAS (19) received a 2020 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. The piece Iridescence, with KEN FIELD (97,03,18) playing sopranino saxophone, flute, and percussion, was released on August 21. SARAH GERARD’s (17) new novel, True Love, was published on July 7 by Harper. SANDRA GIBSON (99,12) and LUIS RECODER (12) released a digital album, Echo Chamber, in June. Their album, De La Mancha, was released in September. NATHAN GUNN (20) held a virtual event, Shelter in Place: A Living Room Vaudeville, in August. In July, the DANIEL GWIRTZMAN (18) Dance Company participated in The Fantasyland Project, a dance film involving sixteen dancers in sixteen locations. The film earned critical notice in Time Out New York’s curated list of “the best theatre online to watch.” In August, the Company enjoyed a two-week residency outside of NYC, and the footage produced will be launched next year as part of the company’s Dance with Us, a library of video resources designed to demystify concert dance, with the aim of teaching a general public how to view and speak about dance with comfort. YAA GYASI’s (18) novel Transcendent Kingdom was published by Knopf on September 1. She was in conversation with Roxane Gay on September 1 as part of PEN America’s PEN Out Loud virtual series.
MARK HAMILTON’s (99) new poetry collection, OYO The Beautiful River, was published by Shanti Arts Publishing in September. The landmark Norton anthology celebrating the poetry of indigenous peoples of North America, When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, edited by current United States Poet Laureate JOY HARJO (13), was published on August 25. Just Constellations, composed by MICHAEL HARRISON (13,17,20) was commissioned and recorded by Roomful of Teeth and released on August 21. Look What SHE Did!, a video project founded by JULIE HÉBERT (17), had a world premiere of three films from their new Artists of Los Angeles series via Zoom Livestream on July 5. XY, the musical by OLIVER HOUSER (18), was featured as an episode in the new podcast series, Muse: Discover Musicals. In May, KATHRYN HUNT (15) hosted a virtual poetry workshop, Spirit in the Dark: Poetry for Hard Times. She led another on October 24. Her recent poems, Talking Like This and What Rituals Did You Perform, were published by Radar Poetry and Frontier Poetry. She and SPENCER REECE (09) co-led a Zoom workshop, Say the World, on August 22, and will lead another in early 2021. SULEIKA JAOUAD’s (17) “The Isolation Journals,” a community creativity project, continues to grow and connects thousands with daily prompts. MICHAEL R. JACKSON’s (16,19) musical, Teeth, was featured as an episode in the new podcast series Muse: Discovering Musicals. He received the 2019 Hull-Warriner Award, as well as the Frederick Loewe Award from The Dramatists Guild of America. TONI JENSEN’s (17) new book Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land was released on September 8 from Ballantine Press. A new edition of The Book of Matt: The Real Story of the Murder of Matthew Shepard by STEPHEN JIMENEZ (89,03,05) was released on June 30.
TATANA KELLNER (16) has work in a solo exhibition, Your Leader Could Be a Tyrant, at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, NH, through November 1, and had work in the group show, Infinite Uncertainty, at the Opalka Gallery in Albany, NY, through October 11. KAREN KEVORKIAN’s (99) third poetry collection, Quivira, was recently published by 3: A Taos Press. POROCHISTA KHAKPOUR’s (09,12,16) new book, Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity, came out from Vintage on May 19. She discussed the collection of essays on immigrant and Iranian-American life with journalist Julie Scelfo as part of the online program Discourse & Process on August 3. CREE LEFAVOUR’s (14) new novel, Private Means, was published by Grove Press on August 11. DAVID LICATA’s (13) documentary, A Life’s Work, will be streaming online in three upcoming film festivals: the Global Nonviolent Film Festival, the Great Lakes Film Festival, and the Eastern Oregon Film Festival. TRACY LINDER (07) has upcoming solo exhibitions at the Lewistown Art Center in Lewistown, MT, October 2 through November 28 and the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings, MT, November 12 through January 12.
ANDREW MARTIN’s (15) Cool for America: Stories was published on July 7 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ANDY MARTIN’s (16) new book, Surf, Sweat, and Tears: The Epic Life and Mysterious Death of Edward George William Omar Deerhurst, was published in March by OR Books. KAILYN MCCORD’s (19) piece, Life in the Forever Fires: Toward Serenity in an Apocalypse, was published by LitHub in September. ANN MCCUTCHAN’s (17) forthcoming book, The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, will be published by W.W. Norton in February 2021. CHRISTINA MCPHEE’s (19) show, Shapeshifters, consists of drawings that she began at Ucross in November 2019 and was on exhibit through April 5 in Pasadena, CA. She was also featured in an Artist Spotlight article for SmokeLong Quarterly, an online literary magazine dedicated to flash fiction. VALERIE MINER’s (09) short story collection, Bread and Salt, was published in September by Whitepoint Press.
JOSHUA RIVKIN’s (18) new book of poetry, Suitor, was published on September 1 by Red Hen Press. When Birds Are Near, edited by SUSAN FOX ROGERS (10), with a contribution by CHRISTINA BAAL (15,16), was released by Cornell University Press in October. TAD SAVINAR’s (97) new exhibition, A Report on America’s Weather 2016 – 2020: Selected Works by Tad Savinar On the Eve of an Election, was on view through October 9 at the Yeon Warehouse at Jordan Schnitzer Foundation.
A CONVERSATION WITH OUR ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE 8.13.20 on Zoom and Facebook Live featuring Ucross Fellows left to right: DAVID COTE, ELIZABETH DUFFY, MICHEL STONE, NICOLE SARA SIMPKINS; moderated by Ucross President Sharon Dynak (center).
An article about SUSAN MOGUL’s (91) August 2019 show, Less is Never More, at the AS-Is Gallery in Los Angeles, was recently published by X-Tra Arts Quarterly. The magazine will also feature her film, Mom’s Move (2018), on its website. The World Doesn’t Work that Way, But it Could, Volume 1: Stories by YXTA MAYA MURRAY (19) was published on August 11 by University of Nevada Press. FELICE NEALS’s (18) online journal, (Re) An Ideas Journal, released its third issue in August. LYNN NEUMAN (14,16), director of Artichoke Dance, has a series of upcoming virtual and outdoor events this fall. The video series, Isolation/Connection, was created early in the pandemic and includes commissioned music from four composers. An upcoming outdoor dance performance will feature social distancing and is about maintaining six-plus feet from others through complex patterning.
MATTHEW PAUL OLMOS (13) was invited to the Geffen Playhouse Writers Room in Los Angeles, where he will develop a new play inspired by Samantha Power’s memoir, The Education of an Idealist. A video by PAUL OUTLAW (20) was part of the first Virtual Global Queer READ-IN on June 25. The event was a 12-hour online marathon featuring over 30 LGBTQ writers, playwrights, activists, and artists reading passages from their favorite and influential works of queer literature and poetry on camera. Barkskins, an American drama television series, based on the novel of the same name by ANNIE PROULX (90,92), premiered on May 25 on National Geographic. CLAUDIA RANKINE’s (11) new book, Just Us: An American Conversation, was published on September 8 by Graywolf Press. She participated in a virtual conversation on September 30 as part of PEN America’s PEN Out Loud series.
LINDA NORTON’s (18) new book, Wite Out: Love and Work, was published by Hanging Loose Press on May 17.
The podcast Octavia’s Parables, cohosted by TOSHI REAGON (19) and adrienne maree brown, is releasing weekly episodes that follow the chapters of Octavia E. Butler’s SIGRID NUNEZ’s (97,06,18) new novel, What Are You Going Through, Parable of the Sower. was published by Riverhead Books LEBRIE RICH (18) donated her on September 8. sculpture, Charleston Chew (2019), to Raffle for Change in July.
KATE SCHUTT’s (13,16) new album, Bright Nowhere, was released in September and is available on ArtistShare. LIONEL SHRIVER’s (86) new novel, The Motion of the Body Through Space, was published in May by Harper and was reviewed in a New York Times article written by JOSHUA FERRIS (08). Her novel, The Mandibles, was featured in the June 2020 issue of The New Yorker. SUSAN SILAS’s (09) new motion capture video, Eulogy, 2020, is one of a suite of four video works (EULOGY, BEAUTY, MEDUSA & SHAME), and is part of the exhibition Summer Savory at UN/CUBE, an online gallery platform. She is also a new member at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program, where a corresponding exhibition will take place this fall. NANCY SILVIA (94) received an Artist in Residence grant from Cape Cod National Seashore in 2019. Previous grants were received from Acadia National Park and Aztec Ruins National Monument. A recent article about her work, Itinerant Artist, by Michael Chesley Johnson, was published in the September/October issue of Pastel Journal. JONATHAN SKURNIK’s (02) film, Becoming Johanna, had its broadcast premiere on SoCal PBS on May 23. ELLEN SOLLOD (87,92) was included in the exhibition, From A Seed, at the New York Center for Photographic Arts in June, as well as the shows Architectural Photography and Forsaken at the SE Center for Photography in July and October.
DEBRA SPARK’s (88) new collection of essays on fiction writing, And Then Something Happened, was published by Engine Books in August. NICHELLE TRAMBLE SPELLMAN’s (04) series, Truth Be Told, starring Octavia Spencer and Aaron Paul, debuted as a launch show for Apple TV+ in December 2019. Spellman won the NAACP Image Award for Best Writing in a Dramatic Series. Season Two of the series is currently underway. On view through August 22 at the Missoula Art Museum, the exhibition Earthborn: 30 Seconds to 40 Moons featured recent work by photographer ELIZABETH STONE (11,14,17). RAQI SYED’s (20) VR project, MINIMUM MASS, played at the Annecy Film Festival in June and won an award for the Best VR Work. It also played virtually at CannesTribecca. PAMELA TALESE (02,18) had work included in two group shows, the online art sale Small Works for Big Change, from September 1 to October 31, and Power Ts 2020, with Pierogi Gallery through October 1. MARTHA TUTTLE (16) led a still-life drawing workshop on Zoom in July in conjunction with the exhibition Entwined: Jennifer Reifsneider + Martha Tuttle on view in the Ucross Art Gallery through October 30. The workshop was featured in Sheridan’s Celebrate the Arts festival in September and is available on the Ucross YouTube channel. Her installation A stone that thinks of Enceladus is on view at Storm King Art Center in New WIndsor, NY, through November.
JOSETTE URSO (95,14) had a solo exhibition at Markel Fine Arts in NYC through August, as well as work in the group show, Pour Spill Drip Stain, at Chautauqua School of Art in NY, which ran through August 25.
IN MEMORIAM
The Art of Coding: The Language of Drawing, Graphics, and Animation, co-authored by ANNA URSYN (87), Mohammad Majid al-Rifaie, and Theodor Wyeld, was published by Taylor & Francis and released in July. In May, BENJAMIN VELEZ (17,18) was awarded the 2020 Jonathan Larson Grant and was also an honoree of the Thom Thomas Award.
AWARD ANNOUNCEMENTS LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PRIZE FOR AMERICAN FICTION COLSON WHITEHEAD NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS Nonfiction Shortlist JENN SHAPLAND
BRAD WATSON 1955 - 2020 An award-winning fiction writer, as well as the director of the University of Wyoming’s creative writing program, Brad was a Ucross Fellow in 2019. He was a beloved friend and mentor to many and will be missed.
Fiction Longlist CHRISTOPHER BEHA RUTHIE AWARDS (Named in honor of RUTH MALECZECH) JOHN KELLY SHEILA TOUSEY THE MAP FUND Finalists GORDON BEEFERMAN EVE BEGLARIAN CHARLOTTE BRATHWAITE MARY ELLEN CHILDS MICHAEL R. JACKSON Semifinalists JOSH KUN FRANK LONDON KATERINA WONG
HELEN DUBERSTEIN LIPTON 1926 - 2020 A writer, artist, and Ucross Fellow in 1992, Helen leaves behind a rich legacy in her work and in the memory of many who loved her.
SPOTLIGHT UCROSS SPOTLIGHT, a nationwide series of artist-centric events, is designed to highlight our esteemed alumni, their work, and their contribution to the nation’s arts and letters. During these current times where we are avoiding gathering in-person, we will be hosting UCROSS SPOTLIGHT ON ZOOM.
OCTOBER 21, 2020 A discussion of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, which was adapted for the stage by TOSHI REAGON (19) and presented at CAP UCLA in Spring 2020.
OCTOBER 1, 2020 We were thrilled to kick off our fall Ucross Spotlight series with AYAD AKHTAR (00,15) and SUKI KIM (98,05,18).
MAY 28, 2020 Featuring Flight Path Dance Project, led by MICHAEL MCGOWAN (10).
We always enjoy hearing from our alums. send your current news to us at info@ucross.org!
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