JUNE @ MILLAY ARTS
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Dina Nayeri, Non-Fiction; Edinburgh, Scotland — A former refugee from Iran, Dina is the author of two critically acclaimed narrative nonfiction books Who Gets Believed (2023) and the ground-breaking and much praised The Ungrateful Refugee (2019), as well as two previous novels. The Ungrateful Refugee (2019), won Germany’s prestigious Geschwister Scholl Preis, and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Elle Grand Prix Des Lectrices, and called by The Observer “a work of astonishing insistent importance.” Her work is published in 20+ countries and translated into 14 languages, with essays and stories in The New York Times Magazine, NYT Book Review, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Best American Short Stories, and many other publications. Her acclaimed Guardian Long Reads are among the most widely read and anthologized of the column, and are taught in school curricula across Europe and the U.S. Dina was a 2019-2020 fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas & Imagination in Paris and a 2020 fellow at the American Library in Paris, a winner of a National Endowment for the Arts literature grant, the UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize, and a finalist for the Rome Prize. Her essays and stories on displacement and home are taught in schools across Europe and the US. Dina holds an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (2013), and MBA (2006) and M.Ed (2007) from Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Arts (Magna Cum Laude) in Economics from Princeton University (2001). She is now a Reader (permanent faculty) in the School of English at the University of St Andrews. Dina is a trustee of Refugee Support Europe and Hostnation.
Aimee K. Michel, Playwriting/Theater; Sheffield, MA — Our 2024 Martha Boschen Porter Prize/Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation Fellow, Aimee is a Professor of Theater and Head of the Theater Program at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. Aimee has been writing, directing, and teaching theater both professionally and at colleges and universities for over 30 years. Her interest in theater is inherently political and her work as a theater director has focused on the sociological and political roles that theater plays in a community. She was Artistic Director at the New Orleans Shakespeare Festival for over 12 years. Before New Orleans Aimee was Artistic Director of the Directors Project in NYC and has also directed in theaters throughout the U.S. She was a curator director at the NY Theater Workshop and participant in the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab. Aimee has an ongoing collaboration with Arts University Plymouth in the U.K. where she regularly teaches writing workshops. Her book, The Methuen Drama Anthology of American Women Playwrights 1970-2020, co-edited with a colleague, was released in 2020.
Ayanah Moor, Visual Arts; Chicago, IL — Ayanah is a visual artist based in Chicago. Her artwork is held in the permanent collections of the Capital Group (Los Angeles); DePaul Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago); Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, University of Nevada (Las Vegas); Soho House, (London); and David L. Lawrence Convention Center, (Pittsburgh). Moor’s recent solo exhibitions include, Bless Your Heart at RUSCHMAN (Chicago); I Wish I Could Be You More Often at Cleve Carney Museum of Art (Glen Ellyn); and 4 Queens at Test Site Projects (Las Vegas); and group shows: t/here or t/here at Intermission Museum of Art + Stand4 Gallery (Brooklyn, NY); Direct Message: Art, Language and Power, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (IL); Echoes: Reframing Collage, Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago, IL); and Speaking of People: Ebony, Jet and Contemporary Art at the Studio Museum in Harlem (NY). Her artwork is featured in Astria Suparak and Brett Kashmere’s, Incite: Journal of Experimental Media, SPORTS (2017); and Nicole Fleetwood’s, Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness (2011). Ayanah earned an MFA from Tyler School of Art, and a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Jeremy Thurlow, Composing; Fen Drayton, U.K. — Jeremy is a composer, writer, and pianist. Intensely individual, his music reflects on the complexities, beauties and paradoxes of nature; engages with the imaginative daring of Woolf, Bonnefoy, Keats, Dickinson, Dante; and explores rich and fruitful frictions between European contemporary composition and musical traditions such as Raga and Gugak. His scores have been played by the BBC Philharmonic, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Norrbotten Kammerorkest, the Fitzwilliam, Kreutzer, Ligeti, and Alinea Quartets, the Schubert Ensemble, Endymion, Aronowitz Ensemble, Hermes Experiment. His video-opera A Sudden Cartography of Song won the George Butterworth Prize for best new work of the season across the UK. Thurlow also writes on Dutilleux, Messiaen and other French composers. He is a Fellow of Robinson College, University of Cambridge, and holds a Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship for 2024.
Kirtan Nautiyal, Playwriting; Houston, TX — Born in small-town Oklahoma, Indian-American essayist Kirtan is now a practicing hematologist and oncologist near Houston, TX. Recently awarded a full scholarship in non-fiction for the 2022 Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference and a 2023 residential fellowship from the Ucross Foundation, he has published work in Guernica, Electric Literature, Crazyhorse, The Southern Review, Boulevard, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and has been featured in popular venues such as Longreads, Longform, and the Memoir Monday newsletter. His essays have been recognized as notable on multiple occasions by the Best American Essays series, and Gettysburg, initially published in Guernica, appears in the anthology South to South: Writing South Asia in the American South, published this year by the Texas Review Press.
Ahmad Almallah, Poetry; Philadelphia, PA — Our 2024 Kelly Writers House/University of Pennsylvania Fellow, Ahmad is a poet from Palestine and an artist-in-residence at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Border Wisdom (Winter Editions, 2023) and Bitter English (University of Chicago Press, 2019). He won the 2018 Edith Goldberg Paulson Memorial Prize for creative writing and the 2017 Blanche Colton Williams Fellowship. His poems have been published in Jacket2, Apiary, Supplement, SAND, Michigan Quarterly Review, Cordite, American Poetry Review, and Poetry, among other publications.
Krista Knight, Playwriting; Nashville, TN —Krista is a Juilliard Fellow, Page 73 Playwriting Fellow, MacDowell Fellow, Shank Playwriting Fellow at the Vineyard Theatre, Vanderbilt Writer-in-Residence, Chance Theater Resident Playwright, and winner of the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival, and the Broadway on Demand Film Festival. Plays include Sloppy Bonnie (OZ Arts, Nashville Scene Critics Pick, Princess Grace Finalist), Crush (NYTimes Recommended, TimeOut Best Theater to Stream Online, featured in American Theatre Magazine, streaming on the Emmy App), Lipstick Lobotomy (Kilroys List, Trap Door Theatre), Don’t Stop Me – a musical with Dave Malloy (YMTC, Manhattan School of Music), Kirk at the SF Airport Hyatt (New York Theatre Workshop Dartmouth Residency), Primal Play (New Georges), Selkie (Williamstown Workshop, Dutch Kills) and Crimson Lit: Scarlet Letter Set List – a musical with Jill Sobule (Polyphone Festival, Chance Theatre). 2023 New Georges Audrey Resident. Commissions include the script for a ride at Tokyo Disney, The Steinmetz Lab, an EST/Sloan Commission, and DreamWorks/Music Theatre International adapting Trolls for the stage. BA: Brown University. MA: Performance Studies from NYU. MFA Playwriting: UCSD.
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Cora Lewis, Fiction; NYC — For the past year, Cora has worked at the Associated Press, covering financial and economic news. She’s written on student debt, inequality, cryptocurrency, and financial scams, among other topics, such as inflation and the Federal Reserve. Prior to this role, Cora worked at BuzzFeed News, where she covered labor, politics, and breaking news, as well as at The New Haven Independent, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Observer, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction has led to an episode of This American Life and been honored with a Newswomen’s Club of New York Front Page Award. Following her reporting on sexual harassment, the CEO of a progressive media outlet stepped down, and she has broken news on major companies including Walmart, Amazon, and Google. Cora was born in New York City and received her BA in Philosophy from Yale University and MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, where she also worked at Dorothy, a Publishing Project. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Yale Review, Cream City Review, Juked, Reed Magazine, GASHER Journal, Epiphany, Mikrokosmos Journal, TINGE magazine, The Racket Journal, SORTES, The Saranac Review, and elsewhere. In 2021, she received the Carrie Scott Galt Writers Award from the Wednesday Club of St. Louis, and in 2022, Hypertext magazine nominated her story for a Pushcart Prize. Her work has been supported by fellowships from Washington University in St. Louis and the Oldest College Daily Foundation.
Angeles Cossio, Visual Arts; Bloomfield, NJ — Angeles is a multi-disciplinary artist based in the New York metropolitan area. Her work uses a range of materials to explore connections between her personal biography and the natural world. Angeles’ work has been exhibited and screened at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ, the Sheldon Museum of Art, Bemis Center of Contemporary Art, Geary Contemporary in NYC, Manifold Gallery in Chicago and Michigan State University. She is a recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant and was awarded a Gateway to the Arts Grant, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Caleb Tankersley, Fiction; Saint Paul, MN (2nd ½ session) - Caleb is the author of the story collection Sin Eaters—winner of the Permafrost Book Prize—and Jesus Works the Night Shift. His writing can be found in Carve, The Cimarron Review, Puerto del Sol, Sycamore Review, and other magazines. He was recently a Jane Tinkham Broughton Fellow in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. His work has been supported by Tin House Summer Workshop, Greensboro Bound, Twin City Book Festival, and other organizations. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of St. Thomas and serves as Managing Director for Split/Lip Press. He lives with his partner near Minneapolis and is working on his first novel.