(Highlights) MICOL HEBRON

(Highlights) MICOL HEBRON

Interdisciplinary Artist, Curator & Feminist Activist

Now I think we’re in another culture war. I think we’re in, as we see the realm of cancel culture in social media and this very polarising war between the liberal left and the conservative right. I think that we’re in another culture and a lot of it is centering around gender and race. If you look at what’s happened to black women athletes in the last couples of months, the censuring of their bodies either because of hormones in the case of Caster Semenya or Naomi Osaka, there’s a lot of ways that our society has found to police black bodies for being too exceptional in a lot of ways. For performing in exceptional ways, and the white patriarchy doesn’t like to see that because it starts to diminish their power.


MICOL HEBRON

MICOL HEBRON

Interdisciplinary Artist, Curator & Feminist Activist

Now I think we’re in another culture war. I think we’re in, as we see the realm of cancel culture in social media and this very polarising war between the liberal left and the conservative right. I think that we’re in another culture and a lot of it is centering around gender and race. If you look at what’s happened to black women athletes in the last couples of months, the censuring of their bodies either because of hormones in the case of Caster Semenya or Naomi Osaka, there’s a lot of ways that our society has found to police black bodies for being too exceptional in a lot of ways. For performing in exceptional ways, and the white patriarchy doesn’t like to see that because it starts to diminish their power.


(Highlights) ANA CASTILLO

(Highlights) ANA CASTILLO

Award-winning Xicana Activist, Editor, Poet, Novelist, Artist
Author of My Book of the Dead
One of the things that is dying is our planet. We hear these sirens every single day. We’re being warned daily by experts and concerned people how vast that squandering is going. It’s a case of urgency and it’s astounding and a very sad, a very pathetic comment on modern life that most people are ignoring those signs. As a poet, it seems to me that one of the tasks that the poet takes on, it’s a vocation that’s born with it, it’s this consciousness, this serving as witness.

ANA CASTILLO

ANA CASTILLO

Award-winning Xicana Activist, Editor, Poet, Novelist, Artist
Author of My Book of the Dead
One of the things that is dying is our planet. We hear these sirens every single day. We’re being warned daily by experts and concerned people how vast that squandering is going. It’s a case of urgency and it’s astounding and a very sad, a very pathetic comment on modern life that most people are ignoring those signs. As a poet, it seems to me that one of the tasks that the poet takes on, it’s a vocation that’s born with it, it’s this consciousness, this serving as witness.

(Highlights) SIRI HUSTVEDT

(Highlights) SIRI HUSTVEDT

Novelist and Essayist

The reason I think you should read in these other disciplines is because it will help you in your own work. Now I really mean that. I think what has happened with the fragmentation of disciplines is that when problems arise. ...the people working in the discipline are unable to see avenues out of the problem that they would easily see if they had worked through problems in other disciplines.

SIRI HUSTVEDT

SIRI HUSTVEDT

Novelist and Essayist

The reason I think you should read in these other disciplines is because it will help you in your own work. Now I really mean that. I think what has happened with the fragmentation of disciplines is that when problems arise. ...the people working in the discipline are unable to see avenues out of the problem that they would easily see if they had worked through problems in other disciplines.

(Highlights) KATE MUETH

(Highlights) KATE MUETH

Actress, Choreographer, Artistic Director - Neo-Political Cowgirls

I care very deeply about the arts, theater arts. So I had a choice to make, either leave entirely or be the change, as they say. So I started Neo-Political Cowgirls to embrace women in their story, in our story.

(Highlights) APRIL GORNIK

(Highlights) APRIL GORNIK

Artist and activist for people, places, and animals

I was in a group called the Women's Action Coalition in the early 90's. The fact that we couldn't get the ERA passed is insane. Although, now as I’m seeing it reintroduced, it should be a true equal rights amendment for everybody. Not just focused on women being equal to men, but a real update to the constitution. We still have things that we need to rewrite.

APRIL GORNIK

APRIL GORNIK

Artist and activist for people, places, and animals

I was in a group called the Women's Action Coalition in the early 90's. The fact that we couldn't get the ERA passed is insane. Although, now as I’m seeing it reintroduced, it should be a true equal rights amendment for everybody. Not just focused on women being equal to men, but a real update to the constitution. We still have things that we need to rewrite.

(Highlights) ALICE NOTLEY

(Highlights) ALICE NOTLEY

Poet

I wrote "I the People" in about 1985. I was living in New York and it was one of those years when it was an anniversary of the Constitution…My first husband had died a few years previously, and I didn't feel like I was part of any "we." But I did feel that I was "the people," somehow. So, I just changed it to "I the People." It seemed to me that that could be something that anyone might say to themselves, I the people.

JESSA REED

JESSA REED

Comedian & Host of Awakening Orientation Dept. & Soberish

That’s just always been something that’s been inspiring to me which is helping people from the wrong side of the tracks, the misunderstood, the addicted, helping people step into their power and believe in themselves.

(Highlights) CINDY CHUPACK

(Highlights) CINDY CHUPACK

Writer · Producer · Director
Sex and the City, Modern Family, Everybody Loves Raymond, Otherhood

It was a long journey because I think I've been writing television now twenty-five years. I never really had the directing bug. I always loved writing and I like being behind the scenes and, in television, writers have so much control anyway to rise up the ranks and run the show and hire the directors, so I mostly had just great collaborations with directors.

CINDY CHUPACK

CINDY CHUPACK

Writer · Producer · Director
Sex and the City, Modern Family, Everybody Loves Raymond, Otherhood

It was a long journey because I think I've been writing television now twenty-five years. I never really had the directing bug. I always loved writing and I like being behind the scenes and, in television, writers have so much control anyway to rise up the ranks and run the show and hire the directors, so I mostly had just great collaborations with directors.

(Highlights) SARA PARETSKY
(Highlights) ELISSA AUTHER

(Highlights) ELISSA AUTHER

Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs & Chief Curator Museum of Arts and Design

So the Museum of Arts and Design historically, for me, is part of a New York avantgarde scene. It's just that it was dedicated to artists working in these historically-marginalized materials. And it continues to do that. That mission has never changed.

ELISSA AUTHER

ELISSA AUTHER

Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs & Chief Curator Museum of Arts and Design

So the Museum of Arts and Design historically, for me, is part of a New York avantgarde scene. It's just that it was dedicated to artists working in these historically-marginalized materials. And it continues to do that. That mission has never changed.

(Highlights) JEANNIE VANASCO

(Highlights) JEANNIE VANASCO

Award-Winning Memoirist, Author & Educator

What interested me about this particular experience is that I didn’t have the language to attach to it in the way I had the language to attach to a later experience that I would have no trouble calling rape, but happened to me and I call Mark in the book. I didn’t know what to call that for the longest time, so I didn’t know what to feel about it, and so as a writer that interests me. When I don’t have the words for something, when I sense that inevitably I’m going to fail.


JEANNIE VANASCO

JEANNIE VANASCO

Award-Winning Memoirist, Author & Educator

What interested me about this particular experience is that I didn’t have the language to attach to it in the way I had the language to attach to a later experience that I would have no trouble calling rape, but happened to me and I call Mark in the book. I didn’t know what to call that for the longest time, so I didn’t know what to feel about it, and so as a writer that interests me. When I don’t have the words for something, when I sense that inevitably I’m going to fail.