Claudia Rankine and John Lucas: Film Screening & Conversation

Join author Claudia Rankine and filmmaker John Lucas for a screening of and Q&A about the latest in their Situations series.

Situations, in Rankine's words,  "is a multi-genre response to contemporary life in the twenty-first century. Each video is in dialogue with a natural disaster or a national or international event or policy. Our intent was to interrogate the political and cultural impact of catastrophic events on individual lives through layered responses to moments such as the attack on the World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina or “stop and frisk” laws. At times, these events were set in motion by a single encounter, as in the World Cup headbutt where Zinedine Zidane felt the assault that language can yield and responded to it. At other times, social media supplied us with the videos of shootings of unarmed people of color that were collaged in order to recreate the effect of an accumulated affront on a life, on lives. As artists and citizens, we were especially interested in how the media informs our understanding through specific racialized framing of these public events. Our national discourse reinforces or interrupts ideas informing the racial imaginary and since many, if not all, of these events engage the language of race and racism, this age-old tension was crucial as we set out to marry language to image. The documentary impulse behind Situations can be seen not only in the appropriated images but also in the appropriated language. Our titles attempt to locate the events in real time and in some works, like Hurricane Katrina, the text, for the most part, is taken from actual statements made in response to the displacement and abandonment of American Citizens. It is our feeling that both devastating images and racist statements need management. In other videos a frame was built for the images through appropriated texts from literary and philosophical sources which exist alongside the poetic lines. This ongoing series was conceived in part as a civic response to an archive of images of contemporary life that carries with them the legacy of the “afterlife of slavery.”

Claudia Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; two plays including Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue; numerous video collaborations, and is the editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. She lives in California and teaches at Yale University as the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry.

John Lucas has worked as a documentary photographer for more than 25 years and has directed and produced several cutting-edge multimedia projects. In 2014, Lucas completed his first feature-length documentary film “The Cooler Bandits,” which was awarded best documentary at the 2014 Harlem International Film Festival. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries both nationally and internationally including the Brooklyn Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Redcat, OK Harris Works of Art, La Panaderia, Aeroplastics Contemporary and Fieldgate Gallery.

Jaswinder Bolina & Victoria Chang in Conversation

Poets Jaswinder Bolina and Victoria Chang virtually gathered to discuss their latest books — Jaswinder’s first essay collection Of Color (McSweeney’s, 2020) and Victoria’s 2020 National Book Award longlisted Obit (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) — as well as artistic influences and a new generation of poetry.

Jaswinder Bolina is an American writer. His first collection of essays Of Color was published by McSweeney’s in June 2020. His most recent collection of poetry The 44th of July was released by Omnidawn in April 2019. It’s been named a finalist for the 2019 Big Other Book Award and was long-listed for the 2019 PEN America Open Book Award. His previous collections include Phantom Camera (winner of the 2012 Green Rose Prize in Poetry from New Issues Press), Carrier Wave (winner of the 2006 Colorado Prize for Poetry from the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University), and the digital chapbook The Tallest Building in America (Floating Wolf Quarterly 2014). An international edition of Phantom Camera is available from Hachette India. His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and been included in The Best American Poetry series. His essays can be found at The Poetry Foundation, McSweeney’s, Himal Southasian, The Writer, and other magazines. They have also appeared in anthologies including the 14th edition of The Norton Reader (W.W. Norton & Company 2016), Language: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press 2013), and Poets on Teaching (University of Iowa Press 2011). He teaches on the faculty of the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of Miami.

Victoria Chang’s new book of poetry, Obit , was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Other poetry books are Barbie Chang, The Boss, Salvinia Molesta, and Circle. She also edited an anthology, Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Katherine Min MacDowell Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellowship, a Poetry Society of America Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, a Pushcart, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, and other awards. Her poems have been published in Best American Poetry. Her children’s picture book Is Mommy? (Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster), was illustrated by Marla Frazee and was named a NYT Notable Book.  Her middle grade verse novel, Love, Love was published by Sterling Publishing in 2020. She is a contributing editor of the literary journal, Copper Nickel and a poetry editor at Tupelo Quarterly, as well as a contributing editor for On the Seawall. She is the Program Chair of Antioch University’s low-residency MFA Program, as well as co-coordinates the Idyllwild Writers Week. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and her wiener dogs, Mustard and Ketchup.

Gioncarlo Valentine & Dawit N.M. in Conversation

Twenty Summers was thrilled to host our first joint-residency with director and photographer Dawit N.M. & writer and photographer Gioncarlo Valentine earlier this October, and to hear them talk about the residency experience, projects they have (and have attempted) to collaborate on, and other projects they have worked on during COVID-19.

Dawit N.M. is a director and photographer currently based in New York. Born in 1996 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, he later moved to Hampton Roads, Virginia, with his family at the age of six. After establishing a deep interest in the visual arts, he became an ardent autodidact, committing himself fully to learning the art of filmmaking and later photography. His subjects have taken audiences into worlds of loss, devotion, intimacy, and innocence. In the same vein, the images question the transparency of narratives that are shaped by western influences. This relationship between identity and stereotypes inspired his first self-published photography book, Don’t Make Me Look Like The Kids On TV (2018).  

Dawit’s directorial debut—a visual accompaniment for Ethiopian-American singer/songwriter Mereba's debut album entitled The Jungle Is The Only Way Out (2019)—earned him a nod for Emerging Director at the 2019 American Black Film Festival. Dawit’s first exhibition, The Eye That Follows (2020), is currently on view at The Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA, through August 16th, 2020.

Gioncarlo Valentine (b. 1990) is an award winning American photographer and writer. Valentine hails from Baltimore City and attended Towson University, in Maryland. Backed by his seven years of social work experience, his work focuses on issues faced by marginalized populations, most often focusing his lens on the experiences of Black/LGBTQIA+ communities.

Gioncarlo was a member of the 2018 class of Skowhegan’s School of Painting and Sculpture. In 2019 he opened his debut solo exhibition, The Soft Fence, at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon. He has had his work collected by the Whitney Museum of American Art, is a regular contributor to The New York Times, and has been commissioned by Wall Street Journal Magazine, Propublica, The New Yorker, Esquire, Vogue, and Newsweek among many others.

Diane Cook & Lydia Kiesling in Conversation

Authors Diane Cook and Lydia Kiesling join the first-ever Twenty Summers virtual festival to talk about their recent novels, The New Wilderness (Harper, 2020) and The Golden State (Picador, 2019), respectively, both of which examine motherhood, the state of the world, and glimpses at even darker futures in unique, funny, and sometimes devastating ways.

Diane Cook is the author of the novel, The New Wilderness, currently nominated for a Booker Prize, and the story collection, Man V. Nature, which was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the Believer Book Award, and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s, Tin House, Granta, and other publications, and her stories have been included in the anthologies Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She is a former producer for the radio program This American Life, and was the recipient of a 2016 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, daughter and son.

Lydia Kiesling is the author of The Golden State, a 2018 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree, and a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She is a contributing editor at The Millions and her writing has appeared at outlets including The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker online, The Cut, and The Guardian.

Shayla Lawson & Elise Peterson in Conversation

Visual artist and podcaster Elise Peterson talks with author Shayla Lawson about her recent book, This is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls & Being Dope, as well as their first Prince concerts, Mariah Carey, Frank Ocean, American Dolls, toxic masculinity, cancel culture, Black girl magic, and so much more.

Shayla Lawson is the author of This is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls & Being Dope (Harper Perennial, 2020) and three poetry collections: I Think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean (Saturnalia Books, 2018), A Speed Education in Human Being (Sawyer House, 2013) and Pantone. She has written for Tin House, PAPER, ESPN, Salon,  Guernica, Vulture and New York Magazine, but she mostly writes for you. A MacDowell and Yaddo Artist Colony Fellow, Shayla Lawson curates The Tenderness Project with Ross Gay and writes poems with Chet’la Sebree (pronounced Shayla, no relation). She was raised in Lexington, Kentucky, is a professor at Amherst College and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Elise R. Peterson is a multimedia storyteller with a focus in visual arts, community building and writing currently based in Los Angeles, CA. Writing clips have appeared in Believer Magazine, Adult, PAPER MAGAZINE, ELLE, LENNY LETTER, and NERVE among others. Her multidisciplinary visual work is informed by the past, reimagined in the framework of the evolving notions of technology, intimacy and cross-generational narratives. Socially, it is her aim to continue to use art as a platform for social justice while making art accessible for all through exhibitions of public work and beyond. She has illustrated two children's books: How Mamas Love Their Babies, Feminist Press, and The Nightlife of Jacuzzi Gasket, Dottir Press. Elise hosted MANE, a online video series highlighting the intersection of culture and hair as told through the narratives of women via Now This News. She also founded and co-hosts Cool Moms: a bi-weekly podcast highlighting women who make their passions a priority. Elise continues to illuminate marginalized narratives through a limitless practice in storytelling.

Jenna Wortham & Naima Green in Conversation

Twenty Summers was thrilled to welcome author & journalist Jenna Wortham in residence at the Hawthorne Barn in September 2020, and to host a virtual conversation with photographer Naima Green.

Naima Green’s exhibit Brief & Drenching is on view at Fotografiksa until February 2021, and Jenna Wortham’s Black Futures, co-edited by Kimberly Drew, will be published by Penguin Random House in December 2020.

Jenna Wortham is an award-winning journalist for the New York Times and host of the culture podcast "Still Processing." A graduate of the University of Virginia, she worked at Wired before joining the Times in 2008 and more recently, the New York Times Magazine. Wortham is an important voice on digital culture and new technologies, and is a co-author of “Black Futures” with Kimberly Drew, coming out via One World 2020.

Jenna Wortham on her current project:  I am working on a collection of linked essays that treat finding the body as a neo-noir thriller as an entry point, and then broadens out into a larger concentric series of inquiries and investigations about how the modern black female queer body functions in space and time. The body is a container for the self, and a vessel for experiences. My book seeks answers to the questions: What does it mean to participate in a body? To unmake and make one while inside one? My book is an investigation on the formation of identity, a blueprint for how to keep it, especially in our newly digitized lives. It’s about discovering the thrill of architecting desire outside of patriarchy, living in blackness and the freedom of exploring life beyond any earth-bound paradigm. I think about this work as a ritual, an unlearning, an unbecoming as a means to unfold. An exorcism in reverse. A repossession. It is a story about identity, and body consciousness, the liminal space between our masculine and feminine sides, digital homogeneity, intimacy and lust.

Naima Green is an artist and educator currently living between Brooklyn, NY and Mexico City, Mexico. She holds an MFA in Photography from ICP–Bard, an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a BA from Barnard College. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Smart Museum of Art, MASS MoCA, International Center of Photography, Houston Center for Photography, Bronx Museum, BRIC, ltd los angeles, Gallery 102, Gracie Mansion Conservancy, Shoot the Lobster, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Arsenal Gallery. Green has been an artist-in-residence at Recess, Mass MoCA, Pocoapoco, Bronx Museum, Vermont Studio Center, and is a recipient of the Myers Art Prize at Columbia University.

Her works are in the collections of MoMA Library, the International Center of Photography Library, Decker Library at MICA, National Gallery of Art, Leslie-Lohman Museum, Teachers College, Columbia University, and the Barnard College Library.

Alaya Dawn Johnson Trouble the Saints Discussion

Alaya Dawn Johnson joins Twenty Summers’ first virtual arts festival from Mexico, where she’ll take us on a walk up a path from the village she now calls home, as well as answer questions about her latest novel, Trouble the Saints (Tor Books, 2020).

FROM THE PUBLISHER:
“Juju assassins, alternate history, a gritty New York crime story...in a word: awesome.” —N.K. Jemisin, New York Times bestselling author of The Fifth Season
The dangerous magic of The Night Circus meets the powerful historical exploration of The Underground Railroad in Alaya Dawn Johnson's timely and unsettling novel, set against the darkly glamorous backdrop of New York City, where an assassin falls in love and tries to change her fate at the dawn of World War II.

Amid the whir of city life, a young woman from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she’s hired to use her knives to strike fear among its most dangerous denizens.

Ten years later, Phyllis LeBlanc has given up everything—not just her own past, and Dev, the man she loved, but even her own dreams.

Still, the ghosts from her past are always by her side—and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she keeps in her heart. And so Phyllis will have to make a harrowing choice, before it’s too late—is there ever enough blood in the world to wash clean generations of injustice?

Trouble the Saints is a dazzling, daring novel—a magical love story, a compelling exposure of racial fault lines—and an altogether brilliant and deeply American saga.

AUTHOR BIO:
Alaya Dawn Johnson is an award-winning author of speculative fiction for adults and young adults. Her most recent novel, Trouble the Saints, is out from Tor as of July 2020. Her short story collection, Reconstruction, is forthcoming from Small Beer Press in November of 2020. She publishes a monthly newsletter via TinyLetter, which you can subscribe to here. It features writing advice, observations of life and eating in Mexico, and, of course, the latest news of her publications.

Francesca Ekwuyasi reads from Butter Honey Pig Bread

Francesca Ekwuyasi joins Twenty Summers for our first virtual arts programming to read from her recently released novel Butter Honey Pig Bread (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020), an intergenerational saga about three Nigerian women: a novel about food, family, and forgiveness.

FROM THE PUBLISHER:
Butter Honey Pig Bread is a story of choices and their consequences, of motherhood, of the malleable line between the spirit and the mind, of finding new homes and mending old ones, of voracious appetites, of queer love, of friendship, faith, and above all, family.

Francesca Ekwuyasi's debut novel tells the interwoven stories of twin sisters, Kehinde and Taiye, and their mother, Kambirinachi. Kambirinachi feels she was born an Ogbanje, a spirit that plagues families with misfortune by dying in childhood to cause its mother misery. She believes that she has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family and now lives in fear of the consequences of that decision.

Some of Kambirinachi's worst fears come true when her daughter, Kehinde, experiences a devasting childhood trauma that causes the family to fracture in seemingly irreversible ways. As soon as she's of age, Kehinde moves away and cuts contact with her twin sister and mother. Alone in Montreal, she struggles to find ways to heal while building a life of her own. Meanwhile, Taiye, plagued by guilt for what happened to her sister, flees to London and attempts to numb the loss of the relationship with her twin through reckless hedonism.

Now, after more than a decade of living apart, Taiye and Kehinde have returned home to Lagos to visit their mother. It is here that the three women must face each other and address the wounds of the past if they are to reconcile and move forward.

AUTHOR BIO:
Francesca Ekwuyasi is a writer, artist, and filmmaker born in Lagos, Nigeria. Her work explores themes of faith, family, queerness, consumption, loneliness, and belonging. Francesca's writing has been published in Winter Tangerine Review, Brittle Paper, Transition Magazine, the Malahat Review, Visual Art News, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and GUTS magazine. Her story Ọrun is Heaven was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize. Her forthcoming debut novel, Butter Honey Pig Bread will be available October 2020 through Arsenal Pulp Press. Supported through the National Film Board's Film Maker's Assistance Program and the Fabienne Colas Foundation, Francesca's short documentary Black + Belonging has screened in festivals Halifax, Toronto, and Montreal.

Healthcare Panel with Doctors Carl June, David Porter & Josh Bilenker

Immunologist Dr. Carl June, medical oncologist Dr. David Porter, and Loxo Oncology at Lilly CEO Dr. Josh Bilenker gathered virtually early in September to discuss Dr. Porter’s and Dr. June’s groundbreaking immunotherapy work, how work follows them home, and the course of their careers in this lively, moving discussion on what it means to care for those who are running out of hope.

Dr. Carl H. June is an American immunologist and oncologist. He is currently the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. He is most well known for his research into T cell therapies for the treatment of cancer. In 2020 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

Dr. David Porter is the Director of Cell Therapy and Transplantation at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. He has been recognized by America’s Top Doctors 2007, 2008, 2010-2018, by Best Doctors in America 2009 - 2018, and Philadelphia magazine’s annual Top Docs issues, 2004 -2020. He is an expert in blood cancer, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), and leukemia.

Dr. Josh Bilenker received his M.D. from The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and his A.B. from Princeton, awarded summa cum laude in English. Dr. Bilenker was a Medical Officer in the Office of Oncology Drug Products at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for two years. While at the FDA, he conducted clinical reviews of IND-stage and licensed biologic oncology products. Prior to joining the FDA, Dr. Bilenker trained at the University of Pennsylvania in internal medicine and medical oncology, earning board certification in these specialties. Dr. Bilenker is CEO of Loxo Oncology at Lilly, serves as a director of Gossamer Bio, and is also a Board Member of the NCCN Foundation and of BioEnterprise.

Heid Erdrich, Andrea Carlson & Eric Gansworth in Conversation

Esteemed poets Heid E. Erdrich and Eric Gansworth join visual artist Andrea Carlson in conversation to celebrate the release of Heid E. Erdrich’s latest, Little Big Bully (Penguin Group, 2020), and Eric Gansworth’s Apple: (skin to the Core) (Levine Querido, 2020), both out on October 6th, 2020. The longtime friends talk procrastination, expectations to act as cultural informants, and much more.

Interspersed throughout the discussion are readings from Little Big Bully and Apple: (skin to the Core), as well as footage from Andrea’s latest exhibit, Red Exit.

Heid E. Erdrich is the author of seven collections of poetry. Her writing has won fellowships and awards from the National Poetry Series, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Bush Foundation, Loft Literary Center, First People’s Fund, and other honors. She has twice won a Minnesota Book Award for poetry. Heid edited the 2018 anthology New Poets of Native Nations from Graywolf Press (2018). Heid grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota and is Ojibwe enrolled at Turtle Mountain.

Eric Gansworth, Sˑha-weñ na-saeˀ, (Onondaga, Eel Clan) is a writer and visual artist, born and raised at Tuscarora Nation. The author of twelve books, he has been widely published and has had numerous solo and group exhibitions. Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius College, he has also been an NEH Distinguished Visiting Professor at Colgate University. Winner of a PEN Oakland Award and American Book Award, he is currently Longlisted for the National Book Award. Gansworth’s work has been also supported by the Library of Congress, the Saltonstall and Lannan Foundations, the Arne Nixon Center, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Seaside Institute.

Andrea Carlson is a visual artist currently living in Chicago, Illinois. Through painting and drawing, Carlson cites entangled cultural narratives and institutional authority relating to objects based on the merit of possession and display. Current research activities include Indigenous Futurism and assimilation metaphors in film. Her work has been acquired by institutions such as the British Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the National Gallery of Canada. Carlson was a 2008 McKnight Fellow and a 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors grant recipient.

Damon Young & Rion Amilcar Scott in Conversation

Authors Damon Young and Rion Amilcar Scott kick off the first-ever virtual Twenty Summers festival with an epic, sprawling conversation about barbershops, Covid’s impact on their work, Lovecraft Country, humor in writing, I May Destroy You, Kanye West, Black success, and the perils of white validation.

Damon Young is a writer, critic, humorist, satirist, and professional Black person. He's a co-founder and editor in chief of VerySmartBrothas—coined "the blackest thing that ever happened to the internet" by The Washington Post and later acquired The Root—and a columnist for GQ. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, LitHub, Time Magazine, Slate, LongReads, Salon, The Guardian, New York Magazine, EBONY, Jezebel, and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. His debut book, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker, won the Barnes & Noble Great Discovery Prize for Nonfiction (2019).

Rion Amilcar Scott is the author of the story collection, The World Doesn’t Require You (Norton/Liveright, August 2019), a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. His debut story collection, Insurrections (University Press of Kentucky, 2016), was awarded the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His work has been published in journals such as The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, Crab Orchard Review, and The Rumpus, among others.