12/29 – 1/12 Sandra Hurtes, Writer

Writer and creative writing teacher living in Manhattan. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, feminist.com, and numerous other publications. She received a 2004 award from The American Jewish Press for excellence in Jewish journalism. She teaches in Special Programs at the University of Pennsylvania, and is an MFA candidate at Hunter College where she’s working on a memoir, Rescue.

Before writing full-time, she worked as a crafts artist. She designed hand-knit sweaters and vintage hats. Her sweater patterns appeared in Mc'Calls Needlework and Crafts, and Family Circle's Great Ideas.

I began the MFA in Creative Writing program at Hunter College of The City University of New York in August 2005. Since that time I’ve been working on a memoir, “RESCUE: A Memoir.” Writing this book, which is about how my parents’ Holocaust experiences affected my life, is the fulfillment of a dream.

12/29 – 1/12 Elizabeth Smith, Writer

Brooklyn writer, artist, and teacher published in Terrain, Carve Magazine, Smokelong Quarterly, and Mad Hatters’ Review, among others. As she toils on her novel Loveland, she is an associate editor for Mad Hatters’ Review and one of its columnists, writing “The Modern Buckeroos’ Guide to the Western World.” She has been a featured reader in NYC at venues such as Fusion Arts, the Bowery Poetry Club, ABC No Rio, and Kettle of Fish.

12/29 to 2/23 Conley, Writer

Recently of Minneapolis, Charles Conley comes to the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts to complete a short story collection and begin work on his first novel. Later in the year, he will be attending the Can Serrat International Artist Center in Barcelona, Spain. He received an MFA from the University of Minnesota, has been a finalist for the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Winter Fellowship, and has a story forthcoming in The Southern Review. He is originally from Long Island.

In my writing, I explore the relationship between the individual and community. As writers, we often have to create distance between ourselves and our communities—their expectations, values, and taboos—in order to pursue our writing. It is not without sacrifice, though, because within that distance, acceptance, comfort, solidarity, and identity can be lost. In some of my stories, I write about the pressures on the creative individual to turn aside from his or her desires to satisfy the expectations of family, coworkers, or friends. In others, such as “Before Cappuzzi,” I write about what happens when we are seduced by the lure of individualism and lose the sense of community we once had. In “Cadillac Hearse,” we meet a woman who has chosen in opposition to her community many times—by studying in America, by marrying an American, and by cheating on her husband—but whose central story involves a return to her hometown in Peru. By exploring this subject in so many of my stories, I am attempting to understand myself as an individual and artist within and against the idea—and the actuality—of community.

1/2 - 1/26 Sterling Allen, Visual Artist

Born in Farmington, New Mexico in 1981. Shortly thereafter, he moved to San Antonio and then Austin where he received his BFA from the University of Texas in 2003. He made his money as an art teacher, photo lab technician, and most recently, as a lead animator on Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly. He joined forces with Austin’s now defunct Camp Fig gallery in 2004 before helping start Okay Mountain gallery in 2006. He continues to show and make work in Austin.

1/2 - 1/26 Stefan Weisman, Musician

A graduate of Bard College (BA 1992) and Yale University (MM 1997), and is currently a PhD candidate at Princeton University. Presently, he is on the faculty of the Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program. He is a recipient of a 2006 Bang on a Can “People’s Commission.” Among his other commissions are works for Sequitur, the Gay Gotham Choir, and the Oregon Bach Festival which commissioned a piece in honor of George Crumb’s 75th birthday. His orchestral music was included in the American Composers Orchestra's 2005 Underwood New Music Readings. He was the first-prize winner in the Roger Wagner Center’s Choral Composition Competition, and he won the Chicago Ensemble’s 2005 Discover America Competition. Anthony Tommasini (New York Times) called his opera DARKLING "personal, moody and skillfully wrought." DARKLING, commissioned by American Opera Projects, was included in the Guggenheim Museum's "Works & Process" series, and premiered in New York City in March 2006.

1/15 to 2/2 Marshall, Jessie, Writer

Marshall hails from rural Pennsylvania, which she traded for rural Ohio when she attended Oberlin College. She received a B.A. with highest honors in theater and was awarded the Phyllis Jones Memorial Prize for writing, directing, and performing a one-woman play. She has worked with several professional theater companies, including Seattle Children's Theater, New York Theater Workshop, and The Soho Theatre in London. She's taken writing workshops with Christopher Reid, Naomi Iizuka, Paul Harding, Tod Goldberg, and Caroline Leavitt, and she recently taught a fiction-writing workshop at the Dover Free Library in Vermont. Marshall received an M.A. with Distinction in Modern Literature and Culture from the University of York in 2004 and intends to enroll in an M.F.A. program for creative writing in the fall of 2007. In the spring of 2007 her play "Media Medea" will be produced by the Classics Department at the University of Durham in England. She is currently working on a novel.

1/15 to 1/26 Wortman-Wunder, Emily, Writer

Emily Wortman-Wunder has degrees in biology and creative writing from the University of Colorado and Colorado State University. She has written for Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Brain, Child, and Montana Outdoors; her award-winning fiction has appeared in the Colorado Review, Ontario Review, Seed Science Magazine, West Branch, and the North American Review. Her work has won awards in the Atlantic Monthly’s Student Writing Contest and NAR’s Kurt Vonnegut Fiction Prize, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, the AWP Intro Journals Award, and the Best New American Voices Award.

A central obsession in my work is the relationship between humans and nature, either via the formal relationship we have tried to set up through the conducting of scientific study, or through science’s bastard stepchild, natural resource management. Both, of course, are predicated on the assumption that the relationship is simple and determined primarily by us: humans do the studying and the managing, and nature gets studied. Most people who actually work with nature suspect it is not so simple; there is the sense, as the narrator of my story “Bear” describes, of trespassing, and also of needing to give something of yourself. How much of this relationship can we control or even understand? That’s one of the founding questions of my novel-in-progress. There are also the complications on the human side of scientific study, as I poke fun at in “The Life History of the Four-Foot Moth.” Finally, as a brief glance at the samples I have provided shows, I am constantly exploring the boundaries of form, the different types of narrative we use to explain ourselves and the ways those narratives can betray or reveal.

1/15 to 1/26 Reeves, Ramona, Writer

Education

1985 Huntingdon College, B.A.

1987 Bowling Green State University, M.A.

Fiction and Poetry

• Acceptance to the MFA Program in Fiction at New Mexico State University, Fall 2007

• Partial Scholarship recipient to A Room of Her Own Writers’ Retreat, 2005

• Finalist in Austin Chronicle Short Story contest for “Burning”, 2003

• Several poems in Staten Island Poetry Anthology (Chapbook)

• “Kilimanjaro” in South Coast Poetry Journal

• “Firstborn” in Manhattan Poetry Journal

• “Sea Lions at the Zoo” in The Ledge

• “L’Enfants du Soleil” in Sandsounds

• “Marilyn” in the Lower East Side Poetry Journal

• “Ruth Brown” in AIPF (Austin International Poetry Festival) Anthology

• “Helen’s Passing” in AIPF (Austin International Poetry Festival) Anthology

Articles and Essays

• Upcoming article in Texas Co-op Power magazine, circ. @1,000,000

• “Letters to the Editor” in Publish

• New product blurbs for “What’s New” section of Food & Wine

• “Cutting Through Foundation Red Tape” in The Crisis

• “Careers in the Civil Service” in The Crisis

• Valentine’s Day essay for the Staten Island Advance

• “Love It or Leaf It” books’ feature for DNR

• Sunday Feature on the Garibaldi Museum for the Staten Island Advance

• “The October Coast” in Mobile Bay Monthly

• “The Second Language Student” Writing Lab Newsletter (Purdue University)

• Men’s fashion articles and blurbs for DNR’s “Behind the Scenes”

Other

• “Forgotten Name”, liturgy written for South Central Texas UMC Conference, 2005

• Austin Alt Observer, Internet blog started June 2005

In June of 2005, at the age of 42, I left a career as a project manager to pursue writing. This required a major shift in my life, but with the support of my family, one that I felt ready to embrace. Writing fiction has always appealed to me because it is the best way that I know to tell the truth.

Toward this ideal, I write and read every day. Learning to be honest on paper requires practice, discipline, patience, and an awareness of what one hopes to accomplish. In my case, I aim to give Southern stereotypes a facelift, while maintaining a healthy distance from the label “Southern writer”. It seems to me that the truest stories about the South emanate from focusing on the humanity of characters and not from employing tired symbols that fall short of any new revelation.

Creating stories in this manner means avoiding conflict based in villain/victim juxtapositions, and focusing instead on the complexities and similarities of people. As a native Alabamian now living in Texas, I am intrigued by the label “The New South”. While inextricable links between people and history exist, my stories do not emanate from this place, but often address it indirectly. This approach allows me to drill deeper and to make discoveries for myself and, hopefully, for the reader.

1/29 to 3/23 Galle, Jake, Visual Artist

From Bowdoinham, Maine 2005 MFA in Visual Art: Vermont College, Montpelier, Vermont. 2001 BA, cum laude. Art history major; music minor: Plymouth State College, New Hampshire.

I create work. I perform acts of invented labor and explore aspects of respect within the context of work, replacing the often romanticized view of the artist with a laborer. My life as a farmer, woodsman, and worker informs my art. The laborious actions, repetitions, rest and break periods, and the possibility of failure within work are of particular interest to me. I challenge myself by translating these episodes of labor and rest in to moving images, audible events, performances, or created environments. I feel it is important to reflect upon my routines. There is a certain irony in viewing art, a time dedicated to leisure, when the art itself examines work.

Additionally, I am attracted by exploring social and behavioral expectations in gallery settings and constructed spaces in relation to each other and the architecture itself. Examining these ideas of the real, the art, and the fake and where they intersect within spaces are of particular interest to me

1/29 to 2/23 Woodward, James, Musician

Born in California in 1978, James began his music education in Wisconsin. After studying with John Downey and Ronald Foster, he returned to the Southwest in 2001 to continue his studies with Stephen Hartke, Jody Rockmaker, and Rodney Rogers. Recipient of the 2006 BMI Pete Carpenter Film Scoring Fellowship, James Woodward's music has been performed by the Classics for Kids Philharmonic, the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Etowah Youth Orchestra, the United States Army Orchestra, and the symphony orchestras of USC, ASU, and UW - Milwaukee.

As a concert pianist, James Woodward has performed in many recitals and concerts including a guest soloist appearance with the Cobb Symphony in Marietta, GA, where he performed his Piano Concerto and his children's work, When Rebecca Woogie Came to Town. Woodward's works are published by Daehn Publications, Tuba-Euphonium Press, and Gold Branch Music, Inc. Recordings of his works are available on Mark Records, Baer Tracks Music, and Gold Branch Music. For more information, visit James Woodward's website at www.jameswoodwardmusic.com.

James was invited to attend the ASCAP/Disney Musical Theatre Workshop on Monday and Tuesday, January 29 and 30 at Disney Studios in Burbank, CA. The workshop was directed by Stephen Schwartz, composer of Disney's "Hunchback of Notre Dame" as well as "Godspell" and his current smash, "Wicked." This was a fantastic opportunity and great way to begin his residency, having come straight from this workshop.

2/2 to 2/16 King, Delia, Visual Artist

Philadelphia. PA

In recent years I have become a public artist specializing in making art through community involvement. What this means is that I go into communities not my own and help them realize their ideas into large outdoor or indoor murals. This is rewarding because it expands my experiences and opens my mind. It can, however, be difficult because neighborhoods can be insular and therefore suspicious of outsiders.

I was formally trained in Philosophy and Mathematics so this is what I try to teach during a community project. One mural may have as many as four community groups from different parts of the city. These groups can be adults or children. Most of these groups are in poor neighborhoods or prisons. Each project starts with a topic picked by the sponsor: Leadership, Social Class Structure, Family, etc. I will then devise a curriculum that will focus on the topic in a subjective manner. I also add a mathematic element. For example, in the project I just finished for Project HOME, the preteens had to learn and learn to apply the Pythagorean theorem in order to design and paint the mural. I choose to approach the subject matter subjectively because I feel that most of the topics given to us are things that everyone observes naturally. By encouraging discussion amongst one group I hope to show each person that their opinions matter a great deal. By presenting the conclusions of one group to the next group and asking them to discuss them, and to see the similarities, I hope to show them that their opinion can reach farther then their own family and friends. By continuing this process in a circular fashion until the project is completed and installed, I hope to help these groups open up to see others not as threats, but as involved, with them, in the same daily issues of being human.

My private work has mostly taken a back seat to these projects, but when I do get the time to do it, it serves to work out future philosophies on how to approach community involved public art.

2/19 to 3/2 Douglas, Andy, Writer

MFA, creative writing & BA, anthropology: Univeristy of Iowa

Freelance writer, News writer (ICON, Iowa City), Proofreader, Yoga teacher, Public radio announcer and producer (Iowa city & Fort Dodge).

I am working on a memoir about having been a yogic monk in India. At the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, I will continue to revise and edit the chapters completed so far, and perhaps work on a new chapter.

2/19 to 4/13 Goldman, Josh, Musician

Josh Goldman is a composer / improviser / guitarist / instructor who resides in the United States. He composes / improvises / performs music, using acoustic and electronic sources, for various ensembles and settings. Much of his music combines sound and visual elements (film / video / various installation spaces). His compositions and performances have been heard and awarded internationally. As an instructor / lecturer / teaching assistant he has taught for the New York City Department of Education, Mercy College (Bronx House Campus), Pratt Institute, New England Conservatory of Music and Brooklyn College, CUNY. Mr. Goldman holds degrees from New England Conservatory of Music (BM in music performance) and Brooklyn College (MM in music composition).

Language is a stereophonic sound structure (duration: 6 minutes, 27 seconds) composed for seven vocalists (none of whom are using their vocal cords). During playback (in complete darkness), the compact disc should be played as loud as possible, without causing damage to any speaker equipment, or anyone's ears.

2/26 to 3/16 Diaconoff, Cara, Writer

Cara Diaconoff's story collection, Unmarriageable Daughters, is forthcoming from Lewis-Clark Press in early 2007. Her stories have appeared individually in Indiana Review, Other Voices, South Dakota Review, and descant. She has also completed a novel, A Stranger to You, which is presently seeking a publisher. Currently, she is studying for a Ph.D. in English with creative writing emphasis at the University of Utah, where she has been awarded a Steffenson Cannon scholarship to work on her second novel, a piece of historical fiction based on the life of an American woman who spied for the Soviet Union during World War II.

I am a fiction writer who has been writing since I was a young child and working seriously at my craft for almost twenty years. My fiction is marked by a strong romantic, idealist strain and by musicality of language. I do, however, write in a realist mode inasmuch as I’m fascinated by characters and by fiction’s capacity to explore psychological interiors.

I write both stories and novels, though the novel form seems to come most naturally to me. I have completed a novel about a young Mormon man who goes to Russia on a church mission and while there falls in love both with the country and with his assigned missionary companion, another boy. The novel follows his journey out of the closet, even as it also works as a (tragi)comedy of manners about Americans in Eastern Europe during the dizzy 1990s. My current project is a historical novel based on the life of Elizabeth Bentley (1908-1963), an American who spied for Russia as a member of the Communist Party underground during World War II and later turned FBI informant. This is the work upon which I would be engaged during a Kimmel Harding Nelson residency in 2007.

3/5 to 4/6 Kim, Haran, Visual Artist

I was born and grew up in Seoul, Korea. I earned an MFA degree in printmaking from Indiana University, Bloomington, in 2000, and a BFA in printmaking from Hong-Ik University, Seoul, Korea in 1992.

My education provided me with a wide range of printmaking processes. Since graduate school, I became interested in combining other media with printmaking. Currently, I have been focusing on monotype prints and bookmaking, and am working with the theme of “floating.” I want to express a process by which to search for a link between artists and objects – both those that linger in our memories and those quickly forgotten.

I have been interested in describing a journey that is recalled or imagined. My work can be considered as a visual record of my memories on a journey. I always have a desire for places or things that I have not yet traversed. I am trying to find a way to illustrate reflections and transitions that occur with my memories of being in a place.

In the recent works, I wanted to convey an atmosphere that seems to float or flow freely in my work. I like to create a mood with inspirations I have received from wind, clouds, air, a little floating weed on the water and so on. I feel a free flowing movement and wonderment when I observe these elements that seem never to be stuck anywhere. I become awakened and feel the joy of wonderment when the scent of a breeze vanishes peacefully, the sound of a raindrop fades away quietly, and the vestige of a cloud disappears naturally through my work.

I will keep on searching for these elements and try to find a way to transform them into my own symbols floating in my work. I like to see them become vehicles traveling through my imaginary space. I would like to invite viewers to take a ride and make their own journey with my work.

3/19 to 4/27 Perez, David, Writer

Ranchos de Taos, NM

David Perez is the Assistant Director of the Society of the Muse of the Southwest (S.O.M.O.S.), a non-profit literary organization serving the written and spoken word in Northern New Mexico. He is a free-lance writer for the Taos News, and provides private editorial assistance on manuscripts of memoir, drama and poetry. He is also an actor, recently appearing in Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre productions in Taos.

Born and raised in the South Bronx, NYC, Perez spent 12 years as an editor for World View Publishers, writing on world events and domestic socio-economic issues. A writer and editor for Workers World Newspaper and Liberation Magazine, David’s own publications include: The Destruction of the Environment; Capitalism and the Natural Order; and The Class Roots of Racism, which was transcribed into audio tape for the communities of New Orleans.

David’s writings have been reproduced and excerpted by Earth Island Journal, Because People Matter, and The Worker (London).

David has also been published in a number of magazines and literary journals, including his prose piece about his daughter, When Dolls Speak, published in the premiere issue of El Andar. His poem, Ode to Adobo, appeared in Open City: A Journal of Community, Arts and Culture.

After spending decades as a political journalist and social activist, David is now working on a memoir, tentatively titled, Wow! Growing Up in the South Bronx. He has given readings on this work in New York and New Mexico. A chapter of his book is excerpted in Chokecherries, an anthology of writers in the Southwest.

My work is memoir: a coming-of-age story about a Puerto Rican boy growing up in the South Bronx; tough times in the 60s. His is a struggle between the brace of school, accomplishments and awards, and the magnetic pull of the street, adventure, rupture.

But it’s not a story of trial and tribulation. Rather, it is filled with humor: behind the scenes as an altar boy, neighborhood pranks and wild games, chalk-throwing nuns, a family making new roots, the first date!

I have given readings in New York and New Mexico, and my first draft is near completion. The feedback has been quite favorable, and I’m raring to go. This residency comes at a crucial moment, to go deeper and layered in a second draft.

3/19 to 5/4 Morris, Jilly, Visual Artist

Bristol, England

2003 - 2006 University of West of England - MA Research (Merit)

1999 - 2002 Bristol School of Art - Part-time enamelling classes ONCD

2001 - 2001 Bristol City College - Certificate in Counselling Skills

1982 - 1985 Coventry Lanchester Polytechnic - BA Honours Degree - Graphic Design

1980 - 1982 Worcester Technical College - Foundation in Art & Design (DATEC)

My recent pieces merge unusual combinations such as: stitch and enamel; paper clay and wire; porcelain slip and canvas. Drawing is a vital component of my practice; through translation and juxtaposition, I aspire to blur the boundaries between craft and art.

I recently completed an MA in which I researched the wounded body. I find my interest embodied in such geographies; mappings of memories; tokens of life that mark the exterior and interior. Whether a simple cut or a major scar, a story is told and a moment remembered; the body both holds and maps the truth of the experience.

Working from a neutral palette these 'bodyscapes' convey a quiet, spiritual essence; however on closer inspection there is a darker edge revealed, whilst wire protrudes or intravenously penetrates. My work is highly tactile, fusing a wide range of media that builds layers of textures, rhythms and forms. I often use repetition to emphasize; each repetition gives uniqueness. Each contains its own breath, its own moment.

4/2 to 4/27 Murrell, Susan Celeste, Visual Artist

Susan Murrell was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She earned her MFA in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia, and her BA in fine arts with an emphasis in printmaking from the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado.

She attending graduate school on an Academic and Artistic Merit Fellowship, and was a recipient of the New York Workspace Residency, where she pursued independent studio work, research, and completed an internship with a commercial gallery in Manhattan. Before moving to the South for school, Susan lived in Portland, Oregon for many years where she was the owner/operator of a printmaking studio and an active participant in the Alberta Arts District where her studio was located.

My work uses invented biomorphic imagery inspired by scientific textbooks to create a visual language to explore the acquisition and recall of knowledge. I have always been mystified by biology, and my work is far from asserting expertise in this area. My interests lie in the oversimplification that often must take place to aid in understanding the sometimes overwhelming natural world, and the (at times) equally baffling desire to create art.

I use specific materials and styles to explore the different cognitive modes it takes for me to create work, and I anticipate shifts in perception in order for the viewer to appreciate one element of my work to the next. Utilizing the format of large wall installations, my materials consist of illustrative watercolor and pen drawings, which include minute detail to further the mirage of specificity, meditative patterned abstractions of gouache on vellum, large expressionistic acrylic paintings, and encaustic pieces which serve as the more tactile evidence of these invented organisms/worlds.

4/9 to 6/1 Hinrichsen, Sonja, Visual Artist

In my artwork I focus on immediate environments, investigating landscapes and cityscapes. I map them systematically and research their cultural, societal and historical backgrounds. I have recently been quite fascinated with landscapes as they occur in the USA.

The North American conception of “landscape” is essentially different from the European one. Having spent most of my life in Northern Europe, the vast and diverse landscapes that spread across the American continent are very valuable to me and I experience them as something special. I combine my personal perceptions of these environments with the results of the studies that I undertake concerning these areas. I am fascinated with the history of Euro-American settlers occupying these great stretches of land, their various reasons for leaving former homes behind and adventuring into the unknown West; and the impact this process had on the land itself as well as on the Native people who lived in these areas. I have, for instance, created installation pieces that address the history of migration across the treeless prairie of Nebraska and investigate the hardships early homesteaders experienced from social isolation and extreme climatic conditions on the Great Plains.

In the Santa Cruz Mountains of California I explored the elements of a fairly untouched nature and related this landscape to mythologies that - sadly - are the only remainder of the Native people that once inhabited the larger San Francisco Bay Area. Most recently I have been exploring the alpine environments of the Colorado Rocky Mountains and the changes white man brought with him, particularly as a consequence of the discoveries of gold and silver. In this context the history of Native Americans has attracted my attention. I would like to come back to Nebraska and delve deeper into this body of work.

During an artist residency I want to focus on two major subjects within this work series: 1. Local Native American history, culture and mythology, such as that of the Otoe Indians and other regional tribes. I intend to research for materials at archives and institutions such as the local Historical Society and local libraries. 2. The Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Towards the end of my residency I would like to open my studio and invite the local public.

4/30 to 5/25 Chamberlain, Donald J. (Cornell College, Iowa) , Musician

Donald J. Chamberlain is a composer and guitarist living in Mt. Vernon IA. He composes and performs in many styles and genres. Lately, he has been writing music for the stage including songs and music for the Riverside Theatre’s (Iowa City, IA) 2006 Shakespeare Festival production of The Tempest. He received a BA in Jazz Performance (Berklee College of Music) and a MM and DMA in Composition from the University of Texas at Austin. He currently teaches at Cornell College.

4/30 to 6/15 Elizondo Griest, Stephanie, Writer

Corpus Christi, Texas

I am currently writing a memoir called Mexican Enough (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2008) which delves into cultural identity. As a biracial American who grew up 150 miles from the border, I have always felt insecure about my identity, wondering if I was “Mexican Enough” to accept race-based scholarships or “Latina Enough” to wear big hoop earrings. To my surprise, I learned that this is a struggle for Mexican-born and bred Mexicans as well – especially undocumented workers, who feel they are losing their Mexicanidad altogether during their time in the United States. Upon publication, I will embark on a campus tour to discuss these issues in departments of Latino Studies.

Wanderlust is encoded in my DNA. I hit the road at 21 and criss-crossed the globe, belly dancing with Cuban rumba queens and mingling with the Russian Mafiya – adventures which inspired my first book, Around the Bloc. Upon turning 30, however, I started aching for my roots and so traveled to Mexico, my mother’s native land.

Mexican Enough: A Story About Borders documents this journey. Detailed are such experiences as investigating the murder of a prominent gay activist, sneaking into a prison to meet with indigenous resistance fighters, monitoring the fiercely contested 2006 presidential election, and above all – interviewing scores of migrant workers and the families they left behind.

Ultimately, Mexican Enough is a memoir about cultural identity – how we cast it off in our youth only to struggle to find it again as adults (or in subsequent generations). It is a story about language, which enables us to communicate – or not; a story about culture, which enables us to relate – or not. It is a story about shared memory, which unites and divides. It is a story about borders, and the peace and the wars fought within.

Princeton University writer-in-residence 9/05-7/06

World Policy Institute Senior Fellow 2/05-present

National Coalition Against Censorship Board Member 05/06-present

BOOKS published

100 Places Every Woman Should Go, Author, Travelers’ Tales, February 2007

Writing guidebook of must-see travel destinations for women.

Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana, Author, Villard/Random House, 2004

Named “Best Travel Book of 2004” by National Association of Travel Journalists of America and a “Best Book of 2004” by San Francisco Chronicle. Reviewed in New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, USA Today, Orange County Register, Houston Chronicle. Visited 33 cities on book tour.

With a Splash of Salsa and a Jalapeño Twist , Co-Author

Co-writing autobiography of Latina survivor of incest and alcoholic abuse.

JOURNALISM EXPERIENCE v

The Odyssey: US Trek 8/00-5/01 National Correspondent, www.ustrek.org

One of 10 Americans selected from application pool of 500 to travel 45,000 miles across United States and document its history for The Odyssey, a non-profit service/educational Web site with audience of 500,000 K-12 graders nationwide. Interviewed key historical experts; shot documentary footage; filed 50 dispatches; presented at dozens of schools.

The Associated Press Political Reporter Austin, TX, 12/98-6/99

Covered 1999 Texas Legislative Session. Published 150 stories.

Henry Luce Scholar Journalism Instructor and Editor at 21st Century, China Daily Beijing, 9/97-7/98

The New York Times Scotty Reston Fellow New York, NY, 5/97-8/97

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer Freelance Journalist Moscow, Russia, 6/96-7/96

4/30 to 6/15 Ward, Anastasia, Visual Artist

Anastasia Ward moved to Minneapolis in 2000 after graduating from Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado. As a Minneapolis emerging artist she is establishing herself with national exhibits in Vermont, New Hampshire, Illinois, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Colorado, and Minnesota. Ward makes kinetic toy sculptures from used stuffed animals, music boxes, and electronic gadgets. Ward also creates large-scale outdoor sculpture, using her small toy sculptures as models. Last fall she installed one of her large-scale sculptures for permanent display at Western Sculpture Park in downtown St. Paul. Ward is currently an Artist in Residence at the Science Museum of St. Paul, and the Kulture Klub Collaborative in Minneapolis teaching and assisting adults and kids how to make kinetic toy sculptures.

5/7 to 6/15 Sherman, Kelly, Visual Artist

Kelly Sherman received her BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art in 2002 and currently lives in Cambridge, MA. A recent artist-in-research at the Berwick Research Institute and artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center, she has exhibited in New York City, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, and exhibits regularly at the Barbara Krakow Gallery in Boston, MA. Currently working on a conceptual wall mural project with class of 4th graders from a Cambridge Public School, her work is also on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston in their new waterfront building. Her conceptually driven prints, photographs, and video work have won her notice as one of four finalists for the Institute's pending Artist Prize.

I am consumed by the romantic, vulnerable, poetic and bittersweet, and the emotions they elicit when discovered residing clandestinely in the world. I incorporate them into my work by way of a colder process, employing a minimalist aesthetic, rigorous conceptual framework, and focus on analytical structure.

My photographs neutralize the environments they picture; camouflaged by paint, billboards and people are made illegible and characterless. Through this neutrality, the images address the solitude of existence and mutability of identity. Depth of character in this work is effaced though my alteration of context, yet individuals portrayed in another work via their wish lists display depth and complexity. Culled from the Internet, these lists function as portraits of desire. Vulnerabilities and hopes emerge, hidden within seemingly mundane lists. Similarly gathered from the Internet, a survey of eBay chairs – on lawns and driveways – elicits feelings of displacement, loss and loneliness.

I am wary to admit my attraction to emotion, especially in relation to love, hope and loneliness. It seems unfashionable for a practical person in what is often a cynical world. Intent on these topics nonetheless, I attempt to subvert and therefore disguise emotion’s vehicles by presenting mere examinations – of systems, color, language and objects.

6/4 to 6/15 León, Raina, Writer

Raina J. León, Cave Canem fellow and member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, is currently a doctoral student in education at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She heads the High School Literacy Project through the Research Triangle Schools Partnership at UNC. A graduate of Teachers College Columbia Univesity (MA in Teaching of English, 2004) and Penn State University (BA in Journalism, 2003), her poetry has been featured in New York City through the LouderArts Project Cave Canem spotlight at Bar 13, Cornelia Street Café, the Nuyorican Poets Café, Bowery Poetry Club, and the Acentos series at the Blue Ox Bar.

She has also been featured around the country: at bookstores, festivals and conferences such as the Virginia Festival of the Book, Quail Ridge Bookstore in Raleigh and the College English Association. She has been published in the Gival Press Anthology, Poetic Voices without Borders, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade, Growing Up Girl: An Anthology of Voices from Marginalized Spaces, AntiMuse, Farmhouse Magazine, Furnace Review, Constellation Magazine, Penn State literary magazines Problem Child and Kalliope, the Cave Canem Anthology (VIII), and by the Palmer Art Museum for its 2003 Devotion and Diversity exhibit poetry collection. Her first collection of poetry, Canticle of Idols, has been a finalist for both the Cave Canem First Book Poetry Prize (2005) and the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize (2006). In addition to poetry, she is an active scholar, essayist, playwright, teacher of writing, theater, English and Spanish, and dancer.

My work has been affirmed in critical venues through readings and publications. Canticle of Idols was a finalist for the Cave Canem Book Prize 2005 and the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize 2006. Angelitos was an honorable mention in the New Work Playwriting Competition in 2004.

At this point, I am interested in writing poetry about father-daughter relationships as well as exploring narratives of burn victims, both the physically and spiritually burned. I am also playing with doing visual representations of my poetic work in fabric and paint.