KUM JOO AHN
Kum Joo Ahn is a textile artist who specialises in hand-sewn bojagi, traditional Korean wrapping cloth. She practices patchwork, Korean knotting techniques, hand embroidery and natural dyeing techniques. She creates hand-crafted contemporary artworks that reinterpret Korean tradition. She has taught and exhibited bojagi and hand-embroidery in the United States, New Zealand, Malaysia and Korea. In addition to purchases for private and corporate collections, her work has been collected and shown by the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts, USA. She will be exhibiting and teaching Korean textile arts in the USA for three years beginning in August 2015.
JON LEE ANDERSON
Jon Lee Anderson is an investigative journalist who writes for The New Yorker. He has also written for The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, El País, Harper’s and Time. His books include Guerrillas: Journeys In the Insurgent World, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, The Lion’s Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan, The Fall of Baghdad, and the recent El dictador, los demonios y otras crónicas, a collection of articles on Latin American and Spanish politics.
GUILLAUME BONN
For the past 15 years, Paris-based photojournalist Guillaume Bonn has covered the African continent from war-torn Congo to Darfur to Mogadishu. He has also shot stories in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, France, Albania and the United States. He has directed four documentary films, and was a cameraman on Dying To Tell The Story, an Emmy-nominated documentary. The author of three photographic books, including his first monograph Le Mal d’Afrique, A Journey Into Old and New Africa, he is a regular contributor to Vanity Fair and UNICEF. http://www.guillaumebonn.com
BEX BRIAN
Bex Brian is the author of the novel Promiscuous Unbound as well as the forthcoming Ten Block Radius. With her husband Charles Siebert, she has co-written a script entitled Lilly based on Siebert’s book The Wauchula Woods Accord. She has been arts reporter for CBC Radio Canada and has worked on and written for documentary films including The Turkana, a film about one of the last nomadic tribes of Africa. Her travel writing has appeared in Brides and American Way. She writes a blog, Subduction, at www.bexbrian.com. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
CARLA DRYSDALE
A Canadian poet and writer who resides in France, Drysdale’s first book of poems, Little Venus, was published by Tightrope Books in 2010. Her chapbook, Inheritance, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Her poems have been published in PRISM International, Cleaver Magazine, Zoetic Press’s Alphanumeric, Scapegoat Review, Literary Mama, The Same, LIT, the Literary Review of Canada, Canadian Literature, The Fiddlehead, Global City Review, and others. She was awarded PRISM’s Earle Birney poetry prize in 2014, and in 2015 Zoetic Press nominated her for a Bettering American Poetry award. She is currently working on a novel set in 1909 northern Wales. http://www.carladrysdale.com
MIA FUNK
Winner of the Prix de Peinture 2009 at the Salon d’Automne de Paris, Mia Funk was selected for Art en Capital 2012 at the Grand Palais and Sky TV’s Portrait Artist of the Year 2013. Commissions include a painting for Guinness Cork Jazz Festival’s 30th anniversary, and artwork for Penguin Books. Her paintings are held at the Dublin Writers Museum, Paris’ Centre Culturel Irlandais and the FIU World Art Collection in Amsterdam. She directs the art and writing program at École de Dessin Technique et Artistique Sornas in Paris. www.miafunk.com
FRANCISCO GOLDMAN
Francisco Goldman is the author of four novels, The Divine Husband, The Ordinary Seaman, The Long Night Of White Chickens, and Say Her Name, which won the 2011 Prix Femina Etranger. The Art of Political Murder, a work of non-fiction, won the WOLA/Duke Human Rights Book Award. The Long Night of White Chickens won the American Academy’s Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. Goldman founded the Aura Estrada Prize and is Allan Smith Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at Trinity College. He lives in Brooklyn, New York and Mexico City.
JEFFREY GREENE
Jeffrey Greene has published four books of poetry, most recently Beautiful Monsters, a Texas Institute of Letters Award finalist for 2010. He is the author of the memoir French Spirits and the books Water from Stone and The Golden Bristled Boar: Last Ferocious Beast of the Forest. He is the recipient of the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, the Randall Jarrell Award, and The Nation Discovery Award. His poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, The Southwest Review and Ploughshares. He teaches at the American University of Paris. http://www.jeffrey-greene.com
STACY KAMIN
While studying traditional animation at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University, Stacy developed a fascination with capturing movement. After earning her BA in 2000, Stacy decided to pursue fine art in LA, and spent six years apprenticing with Chinese painter Shuqiao Zhou, whose practice is rooted in the great expressive Russian lineage of Ilya Repin and Valentin Serov. She then studied with David A. Leffel and Sherrie McGraw, masters of Abstract Realism and the techniques of Rembrandt. Stacy conducts classes at several venues in LA and is an assistant instructor for Bright Light Fine Art workshops across the US. www.stacykamin.com
VÉRONIQUE LAFONT
Après 13 années à Paris, 4 à Nancy, Véronique s’installe en 2008 en Bourgogne, dans un hameau. Elle explore plusieurs voies, mélange techniques et matières : peinture, collage, photo, tissu, couture, broderie. Son travail s’articule autour de la mémoire, du temps, du souvenir. Il s’inspire du monde végétal et animal, de l’art populaire, de l’idée d’usure, de patine, d’altération, de transmission. Il se décline en séries de peintures (huiles, acryliques), en sculptures textiles (bestiaire poétique) et livres d’artiste uniques ou de petite édition. http://veroniquelafont.blogspot.fr
ANNE MARSELLA
Anne Marsella has lived in Paris for some 20 years. She is the author of four books: The Baby of Belleville, Remedy, Patsy Boone and The Lost and Found and Other Stories. Patsy Boone was written in French. Her work has appeared in publications in the US and in France; she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize nomination and the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award. Having taught literature and writing at the American University of Paris and associate directed NYU’s Writers in Paris program, she currently directs the Wells College Arts in Paris program. http://annemarsella.com
PIP SEYMOUR
Pip Seymour is a painter, paint maker and writer who lives in England and Italy. He has taught historical paint technique and about the use of pigment in paint-making at a number of leading institutions, including The Prince’s Foundation and Camberwell College of Art & Design, London. He is a member of the Society of Dyers and Colourists and is the author of The Artist’s Handbook, available through specialist fine art retailers worldwide. For more background on Pip’s work in the colour industry as well as his line of paints, see www.pipseymour.co.uk .
CHARLES SIEBERT
Charles Siebert is the author of three critically acclaimed memoirs, The Wauchula Woods Accord: Toward A New Understanding of Animals, A Man After His Own Heart, and Wickerby: An Urban Pastoral, a New York Times Notable Book of 1998, as well as a novel, Angus. A poet, journalist, essayist, and contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, he has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Outside, Men’s Journal, and National Geographic. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
ANN TASHI SLATER
Ann Tashi Slater has been published by The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Huffington Post, as well as New World Writing, Shenandoah, Asia Literary Review, and Kyoto Journal, among others. Her work appears in Women in Clothes (Penguin) and the YA anthologies American Dragons (HarperCollins) and Tomo (Stone Bridge). Her translation of a novella by Reinaldo Arenas was published in Old Rosa (Grove). A longtime resident of Tokyo, she teaches at a Japanese university. Visit her website.