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Bob Gruen’s legendary photo of John Lennon will be featured in US Postal Stamp in 2018

BOB GRUEN JOHN LENNON POSTAL STAMP

bob guren john lennon closeupThe newest stamp in its Music Icons series will honor singer and songwriter John Lennon (1940–1980), “….a rock ’n’ roll hero successful both as a founding member of the Beatles and as a solo artist.”

If the photograph for the stamp looks familiar, it was most recently used on the cover of Philip Norman’s book John Lennon – The Life, which came out in 2008. The image is by legendary rock photographer Bob Gruen who knew Lennon well and has taken many iconic images of him. The photograph comes from a photo shoot for the cover of his 1978 album Walls and Bridges:

The Postal Service has previously honoured The Beatles as a group on a 1999 postage stamp as part of its Celebrate the Century series. That issue depicted the Yellow Submarine from the animated movie and soundtrack Yellow Submarine. The upcoming Lennon release will be the first to feature an actual likeness of one of the Beatles on a U.S. stamp.

In 2007 Britain’s Royal Mail issued ten different stamps celebrating the importance of The Beatles to Britain and the world. These depicted album covers (With The Beatles; Help!; Revolver; Sgt. Pepper; Let It Be; and Abbey Road, plus the single ‘Love Me Do’), along with images of Beatle memorabilia. For more detail on those releases click here.

Detailed information and the issue date for the Lennon US Postal Service stamp will be revealed later. The stamp design is preliminary and subject to change until issuance dates.

Bob Gruen, Westbeth resident, is one of the most well-known and respected photographers in rock and roll. From John Lennon to Johnny Rotten; Muddy Waters to the Rolling Stones; Elvis to Madonna; Bob Dylan to Bob Marley; Tina Turner to Debbie Harry, he has captured the music scene for over forty years in photographs that have gained worldwide recognition.

Shortly after John Lennon moved to New York in 1971, Bob became John and Yoko’s personal photographer and friend, making photos of their working life as well as private moments. In 1974 he created the iconic images of John Lennon wearing a New York City t-shirt and standing in front of the Statue of Liberty making the peace sign – two of the most popular of Lennon’s images.

More info on Bob Gruen at bobgruen.com

Huguette Martel writes and illustrates a short essay on Growing up in Wartime France in New York Review of Books

HUGUEETE MARTEL ILLUS,jpg

Read the entire story here at the New York Review of Books, May 2018 internet edition

HUGUEETE MARTEL PHTOHuguette Martel was born in Paris, France. At the age of nineteen, she moved
to New York, where she’s lived ever since. She is a graduate of Cooper Union.
She has been a cartoonist for the New Yorker magazine; her work has also
appeared in the New York Times, Le Monde, and Worth, as well as in
the Narrative Magazine and The New York Review of Books daily.
A painter and writer, she is the author of several books in which she incorporates
paintings and text. Her latest solo show of paintings was curated by Ben Katchor.

Freedom of the Press
Westbeth Graphics Studio

REVISED Freedom Flyer2

Show Dates: May 5 – May 26, 2018
Opening Reception: May 5, 2018 Saturday 6pm – 8pm

Where: Westbeth Gallery 55 Bethune St New York NY
Hours: Wednesday – Sunday 1pm – 6pm

Twelve printmakers using techniques that range from traditional to digital express the freedom of printmaking to cross boundaries both technically and conceptually.

Printmaking is found both in galleries and in the streets. In fine art and in revolution. Because of printmaking’s foundations in reproducibility, multiplicity and versatility, it negotiates the entire spectrum between the static and the temporal.

Each of the printmakers in the show uses printmaking to respond to profound aesthetic beliefs, to explore social and environmental issues as well as to investigate the implications of culture on the natural world.

The world has become pure image. This show examines the nature of seeing.

Participating Printmakers

Christina Maile
William Kennon
Parviz Mohassel
Claire Rosenfeld
Jackie Lipton
Sheila Schwid
Francia Tobacman Smith
Samantha Beste
Charlene Tarbox
Gerald Marcus
Cari Rosmarin
Mindy Belloff

Printmakers Bios

Christina Maile
is a printmaker, painter, and landscape architect. Formerly a playwright she –co-founded the Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective, one of the first feminist theater groups in the USA, and later attended Dan Rice’s master classes in painting. Her landscape architectural work has appeared in Garden Design Magazine, and Landscape Architecture Magazine. In 2013 she received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and a Joan Mitchell Studio Grant for painting and printmaking. Her work has been featured in the International Print Center in New York City, has been included in the Feminist Artists Database at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY, and is represented in many private collections. . www.christinamaile.com.

William Kennon
William Kennon is a printmaker, painter and draftsman. His work, though realistic and influenced by photography is organized around strongly formal designs and chiaroscuro lighting effects. He holds a B.A. in comparative literature/comparative arts from Washington University in St. Louis and an M.A. in art history from Columbia University. He studied drawing, painting, printmaking and anatomy at the Art Students League of New York and the New York Studio School. Mr. Kennon is a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and his work has won awards from the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA), the Butler Institute of American Art, the National Arts Club, Allied Artists, Audubon Artists, the Salmagundi Club and the American Artists Professional League. He has been affiliated with Hirschl & Adler Galleries and the Westbeth Gallery in New York City and the Galerie Albert Benamou in Paris. His work is represented in numerous private collections.

Website: williamkennonartist.com
E-Mail: williamakennon@gmail.com

Charlene Tarbox
Charlene Tarbox grew up in Andover, Massachusetts and attended Connecticut College and the Philadelphia College of Art. With a background in painting, she now works as a printmaker at the Art Students League of New York.

When creating her prints, she employs experimental techniques, concentrating on color relationships and focusing on images that depict the natural world.

Her work has appeared in solo and group shows in New England, New York, and Virginia. Ms. Tarbox is a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists. Her prints are part of the permanent collections of the Hofstra University Museum, The Art Students League of New York, and the Syracuse University Art Galleries.

www.ctarbo4.wix.com/charlene-tarbox-art
cetarbox@gmail.com

Gerald Marcus
Gerald Marcus, painter and printmaker, lives and works in New York City. He studied at the Art Students League of New York with Jean Liberte, Julian Levy, Sol Wilson and Jacob Lawrence.

Marcus has shown his work in many exhibitions in New York City and internationally including, The National Academy of Design; The Hollar Society, Prague; The International Print Center New York; The Susan Teller Gallery, New Yorik; Smith College; Iowa State University; The Lancaster Museum; The City University of New York; the De Nazelle Gallery, Toulouse, and other museums and universities. His work is in many public and private collections. He is a former president of The Society of American Graphic Artists. His biography is listed in Who’s Who in American Art, and The Biographical Encyclopedia of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers of the United States.

Francia Tobacman Smith
Francia has been a practicing artist for over 30 years, along with being an arts activist. She has played a major role in the Women’s Caucus for Art and in that organization organized the Jewish Women Artists Network.
In recent years she has shifted more of her painting to printmaking, specifically Linoleum Reduction prints. This technique involves layering of colors and the design created with each cutting. The positive negative space is created with color and paper as a ground and how they work together. The cutting depends on the tools and the nuances of textures they create. Her prints focus on how lines can become shapes.
Earning her MA in printmaking from Lehnman College, Francia has been a teaching artist for Project Arts, Studio in a School, and for 10 years was co-director of a summer study abroad program for art and music in French-speaking Switzerland.
Selected museum exhibits include: Musee des Beaux-Arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds, CH, Indianopolis Museum, JB Speed Musuem, ERvansville Museum, National Jewish Museum, Mizel Museum, Hartwick College Museum, Owensboro Museum, Tyer Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Bibliotecque Nationale, PR.
The artist has received grants from the Gottlieb Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, Artists Space, and National Endowment for the Arts.She has lectured at museums and galleries around the country.

As an artist resident of Westbeth, and a member of the Westbeth Graphics Studio, Francia’s newest work examines color, shape, line and how they interact with the concept of Freedom of the Press in the 21st century.

Claire Rosenfeld
Claire Rosenfeld is a New York City based visual artist who has shown her figurative expressionist paintings, drawings and prints in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums in the United States and abroad. She has had solo shows at the Museo de la Ciudad, Querétaro, Mexico, and at the Painting Center, Prince Street Gallery, Westbeth Gallery,
Michael Ingbar Gallery and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York. She has
exhibited her work in group exhibitions at Galería Rae Miller and Generator Gallery in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and La Galería in Altos de Chavón, Dominican Republic.
New York group shows include Lori Bookstein Gallery, David McKee Gallery, Broome St. Gallery, A.I.R Gallery, the New York Studio School, Parsons School of Design, Grey Gallery, Lillian Heidenberg Gallery, amongst others, and the Silvermine Guild Arts Center, in
New Canaan, Connecticut.

Rosenfeld has been awarded residencies at Fundación Valparaiso, Mojácar, Spain; Fundación Central Cultural, Altos de Chavón, Dominican Republic; Michael Karolyi Foundation, Vence, France; and at residencies in the United States, including the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ossabaw Island Project, Dorland Mountain Colony, Millay Colony for the Arts, Cummington Community of the Arts, Hambidge Center, and Byrdcliffe Arts Colony.

Rosenfeld received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, an MFA from Queens College, CUNY, and attended the New York Studio School. She has traveled widely in India, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Morocco, Turkey, Mexico and throughout Europe, where the study of ancient cultures often provided inspiration for her work. Painting in New Mexico for extended periods initiated imagery influenced by the light and landscape there.

Ms. Rosenfeld has taught widely, and is currently on the faculty of New York University, where she teaches drawing, painting and printmaking.

www.clairerosenfeld.net

Mindy Belloff, INTIMA PRESS
Mindy Belloff produces fine letterpress printed book and broadside editions at her Union Square studio, under the imprint Intima Press. She has been creating art for over 30 years as a painter, photographer, mixed media installation and book artist. Her works are in numerous permanent collections including the Library of Congress, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Ms. Belloff has exhibited at multiple venues nationally and internationally, including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Sculpture Center, and PS 122. Her mixed media artwork was favorably reviewed by Holland Cotter in The New York Times, her artist’s books have been included in publications such as 500 Handmade Books, and her edition titled W2LZX received an award for Excellence in Book Design. She holds a Master of Arts degree from New York University, is a Mac-Dowell Fellow, and recipient of an NEA Book Residency grant. Inspired by Stieglitz’s Intimate Gallery, Ms. Belloff opened Intima Gallery in upstate New York (2013-2014), which showcased fine prints on paper.

Ms. Belloff meticulously recreated the Unanimous Declaration of Independence printed by Mary Katha-rine Goddard in January 1777. Through her lectures and essays, she hopes to shed light on Goddard and write this Daughter of Liberty back into the historic record. Ms. Belloff is the recipient of a Puffin Foundation Grant supporting “creative and innovative initiatives that advance progressive social change,” for her second, contemporary printing of the Declaration, proclaiming “all People are created equal.” Visit IntimaPress.com for more information.

Samantha Beste
Samantha Beste began her art studies at eleven, painting at the Art Students League of New
York, followed by two years of study in Florence, Italy.
Samantha attended the BFA program at Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio, but moved to Canada, and received her BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. Samantha then spent a decade in London, England, where she painted commissioned portraits and exhibited, culminating in
two successful solo shows of her urban landscapes. When she returned to New York and the Art Students League, she studied printmaking with William Behnken and Richard Pantell, and collage/mixed-media with Martha Bloom.
For the past seven years, Samantha’s painting studio has been based in Beacon, N.Y., and she enjoys experimenting with print media at Garrison Art Center while looking out at the river. Samantha still finds inspiration in the city as subject in her paintings and prints, but has recently been working in mixed-media on a theme of climate change.
www.besteart.com


Jackie Lipton

Jackie Lipton is an artist, painter, printmaker and educator. She equates creative process with survival and intends that her “art and painting as an idea is to touch you and shake you”. She equates the experience of painting to survival, where the work itself becomes alive.

She is currently showing work at (Art Market Provincetown) AMP Gallery in MA with a show of paintings and prints scheduled for September 2018.

Exhibitions include David Schweitzer Contemporary, Life on Mars Gallery, and Anthony Philip Gallery in Brooklyn; and in Chelsea, NYC, the Art Resources Transfer Gallery and Gale/Martin Gallery, others. Others include the ARC at the Whitney Museum, plus the Whitney Museum Gallery at the Art Resources Center, the Aldrich Museum, Condeso/Lawler Gallery, WARM Gallery, Gallery Boreas, Corinne Robbins Gallery, and Westbeth Gallery in NYC; the Schoolhouse Gallery and AMP Gallery in Provincetown, Mass.

Selected grants and awards include the Pollock Krasner Foundation, the Whitney Museum Arts Resources Center (ARC), Bob Blackburn Print Studio, Feminist Art Institute (FAIA) Collaborative Arts project, MacDowell Colony for the Arts, repeat residencies at Cummington Community of the Arts (CCA) and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation emergency grants and Gallery Boreas’ award of travel with a studio and apartment in Reykjavik, Iceland, and others.

Lipton works in her studio in Chelsea and lives in Westbeth Artist Housing with her life partner, J. Christopher Bolton and their two amazing cats.
www.jackielipton.com


Sheila Schwid

Artist’s Background: I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1932. I have been painting since I can remember. Growing up in Omaha, I studied with the local artists, Bill Hammon, Milton Wolsky, Frank Sapousek, John and Hettie-Marie Andrews. From these mentors I learned the basics of life drawing, landscape and still life. After completing my BA at Omaha U, I studied at the Art Center School in Los Angeles. Later I came to New York just in time to join in the excitement of the 10th Street Galleries where I showed in a few group shows. I also participated in the Happenings of Red Grooms, and was an angel in the movie by Robert Frank, “The Sins of Jesus,” by Babel.

Poetry Reading: 6 Poets Read from their work

Poetry Reading (#2)


Biographies of the Poets

Shelley Seccombe (named for P. B. Shelley)
It gives me great pleasure to share this pursuit with other writers, including my brother and sister. I am grateful to Otis and the poets who share their Sunday evening readings with the Westbeth group. — Shelley Seccombe (named for P.B. Shelley)

John Silver
Grew up Cold Spring Harbor, L.I. Does covers, poems for Tamarind a coalition magazine. Hosted Tamarind Collation for 10 years. Moved to Westbeth,
Published in AND THEN, and other anthologies.
Hosted Westbeth readings. Curator of The Image and The Word Exhibition at the Westbeth Gallery. 2 Books of poetry (UNDERFIELD PRESS). Contributed covers and poems to White Rabbit and other anthological constructions. John Silver also paints.

Linda Marks
Linda Marks has been writing poetry in NYC for over 40 years and reading and publishing in small venues. She prides herself on writing accessible poetry.

Otis Kidwell Burger
I’m from an old New England family of abolitionist, preachers and some writers like Mary Otis Warren and Sydney Gay. Nature has always been important in my writing. I spent my childhood in the woods of Staten Island and later, many summers in the woods of New York and Connecticut.

Feldenkrais Class with certified Feldenkrais teacher

FELDENKRAIS 2017

$5.00 per class

Contact: Sandra Kingsbury westbethevents
@gmail.com

Sponsored by Westbeth Beautfication Committee

Doron Tadmor is a Feldenkrais Guild certified teacher

Class lasts 1 hour

The Feldenkrais Method consists of verbally directed movement sequences presented primarily to groups. A lesson generally lasts from thirty to sixty minutes. Each lesson is usually organized around a particular function.

Feldenkrais’Awareness Through Movement lessons, people engage in precisely structured movement explorations that involve thinking, sensing, moving, and imagining. Many are based on developmental movements and ordinary functional activities. Some are based on more abstract explorations of joint, muscle, and postural relationships. The lessons consist of comfortable, easy movements that gradually evolve into movements of greater range and complexity.

Feldenkrais’ lessons attempt to make one aware of his/her habitual neuromuscular patterns and rigidities and to expand options for new ways of moving while increasing sensitivity and improving efficiency. There are hundreds of Awareness Through Movement lessons contained in the Feldenkrais Method that vary, for all levels of movement ability, from simple in structure and physical demand, to more difficult lessons.

A major goal of the Feldenkrais Method is to learn how one’s most basic functions are organized and improve. By experiencing the details of how one performs any action, the student has the opportunity to learn how to:

attend to his/her whole self
eliminate unnecessary energy expenditure
mobilize his/her intentions into actions
learn and improve

Westbeth in NY Times Magazine
Culture Issue April 2018
The Landmarks that Made New York
A Cultural Capital

Photo: Rob Stephenson

Westbeth Artists’ Housing
Westbeth, on Bethune Street, along the Hudson River, one of the first subsidized artists’ housing complexes in the United States, opened in 1970, providing cheap rent in 384 live-work spaces. Many of the residents that moved in decades ago are still there today. Credit Rob Stephenson

ONE OF THE realities of living in New York is that you cannot become too attached to specific places any more than you can become attached to certain people in your life: the waitress you chat with every weekend, the parking garage guy, the newsstand vendor from whom you buy a paper. Often, they disappear, and you may never learn why. Why was that building torn down? Why did that bar close overnight? Whatever happened to the bartender? And what about Mohammed? He was here yesterday.

Place is as crucial to the architecture of memory as it is to dreaming, and like those New Yorkers who seem to disappear, spaces themselves carry their own memories here. Departed landmarks like CBGB or the Mudd Club are not so much addresses in downtown Manhattan as they are touchstones in the collective consciousness, occasionally reminding us of what was and of how much has changed — not least, ourselves. CBGB is where a 16-year-old Adam Horovitz — soon to be known as Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys — opened for punk legends Bad Brains in 1982; the Mudd Club is where, a few years earlier, Talking Heads, performing just days after the release of “Fear of Music,” coolly name-checked both spots in the iconic song “Life During Wartime.” (“This ain’t no Mudd Club or CBGB / I ain’t got time for that now.”) Moments like these still haunt the city — half recalled, half imagined — even now that the Mudd Club is a condo building where a unit sold recently for $3.6 million, or CBGB has been colonized by designer John Varvatos, plundering the cultural heritage of the very building he now occupies.

– Bill Hayes

Read rest of article HERE

Beth Soll & Company in “The Window: Visions and Ordinary Rituals”
Saturday and Sunday May 5th and 6th at Martha Graham Dance Studio

Beth Soll Dance

Dance Projects, Inc. presents Beth Soll & Company in “The Window: Visions and Ordinary Rituals”: A new dance choreographed by Westbeth resident, Beth Soll and danced Karesia Batan, Bridget Cronin, Kristen Hedberg, Michelle Micca, Emma Pressman, Beth Soll and Lea Torelli. Music by J.S. Bach and new music by Carolyn Lord and Dewey Emadoo. Also on the program: Beth Soll’s solo: “Dance for Ina,”

When: Saturday, May 5 at 8:30 pm and Sunday May 6 at 3 pm
What: Dance for Ina (2017) and The Window: Visions and Ordinary Rituals (premiere)
Where: Martha Graham Studio Theater at 55 Bethune Street in NYC. 11th floor.

Admission: General $18. Seniors (65+) $15. Children (ages 5-10) $5.

Reservations and/or tickets at brownpapertickets.com or at bethsbron@gmail.com or tickets at the door (cash only).

Information: bethsollandcompany.org, bethsbron@gmail.com, https://m.facebook.com/Dance- Projects-Inc-Beth-Soll-Co- 449503308531483/

Event:
This event will feature a premiere performance of the full-length dance, “The Window: Visions and Ordinary Rituals,” which will be performed by Soll’s company of seven dancers. In addition, Beth Soll will perform “Dance for Ina” (2017) to traditional jazz and the music of J.S. Bach.

“The Window: Visions and Ordinary Rituals,” with music by New York composers Carolyn Lord and Dewey Emadoo, was inspired by the current interest in meditation practices and by rituals in both everyday life and more official contexts. Within the dance, visions of peaceful meditative movement interludes are juxtaposed with unofficial and sometimes athletic, secular rituals.

Kate Walter ‘s latest essay, We Were Immigrants Who Sold our House to Other Immigrants, featured in Purple Clover online magazine.

KATE WALTER immigrant article

About five years ago, Olga asked my mother if she would consider renting the empty first-floor apartment. Olga wanted to sponsor her sister and brother-in-law and bring them from Ecuador. Mom agreed.

Bella and Jorge became tenants in the house too; it felt safer to us with a man on the premises. Bella was eager to learn English and Mom tutored her using books my sister had from her career as a reading teacher. My mother, who’d come here from Ireland as a child, was glad to help the new arrivals adjust.

Now Olga wanted to buy the house….

Read the full article HERE

Kate Walter
is the author of the memoir Looking for a Kiss: A Chronicle of Downtown Heartbreak and Healing. Her essays and opinion pieces have appeared in many publications. She teaches personal essay writing at New York University School of Professional Studies.

PEN America World Voices Festival
Literary Quest
Westbeth Edition

PEN Poster 2018 Public

When: Friday April 20
Where: Westbeth Community Room 155 Bank Street
When: 6:30pm – 9:30pm
Tickets: $20
Order tickets here: https://worldvoices.pen.org/session/literary-quest-westbeth-edition/

Experience the artist’s life in one of New York’s leading artist housing communities. The artist-residents of this cultural institution open their homes for intimate, salon-style readings and conversations with Festival authors, followed by cocktails in their legendary gallery.

With PEN Authors:
Nachoem M. Wijnberg (Amsterdam, 1961) is a Dutch poet and novelist. His poetry has received many awards, including the 2018 PC Hooft Prize, the most important career award in the Netherlands. His work has been translated into many languages, books in English include Advance Payment (Anvil Press/Carcanet, 2013), Divan of Ghalib (White Pine Press, 2016) and Of Great Importance (Punctum, 2018).He is also a professor at the University of Amsterdam Business School.

Rupert Thomson’s latest novel is Never Anyone But You slated to publish with Other Press this June. He is the author of nine highly acclaimed novels, including Katherine Carlyle; Secrecy; The Insult, which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize and selected by David Bowie as one of his 100 Must-Read Books of All Time. He lives in London.

Ashley Hay’s work has been praised for its “incandescent intelligence and a rare sensibility.” An award-winning essayist and science writer, her three novels–The Body in the Clouds, The Railwayman’s Wife, and A Hundred Small Lessons–have received or been shortlisted for literary awards in Australia and beyond.

Susan Kuklin is an author and photographer of nonfiction books for young adults, including Beyond Magenta, Transgender Teens Speak Out, No Choirboy: Murder, Violence and Teenagers on Death Row, and Dance, coauthored with Bill T. Jones. Her photographs have appeared in major newspapers and magazines, documentary films, and the permanent collection at the Museum of the City of New York.

Susan will be reading from a soon-to-be-published book, Here to Stay, Undocumented Young Adults.

Trifonia Melibea Obono is a journalist and a professor at the National University of Equatorial Guinea. She is pursuing her doctorate in gender studies and human rights from the University of Salamanca, Spain.

Sharon Bala’s debut novel, The Boat People, was published by McClelland & Stewart and Doubleday US in January 2018. The manuscript won the Percy Janes First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Fresh Fish Award. A three-time recipient of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Arts and Letters award, she has stories published in Hazlitt, Grain, The Dalhousie Review, and others.

Demian Vitanza is an acclaimed Norwegian playwright and author. He taught writing in Norway’s high security prisons when he met a young Norwegian-Pakistani man imprisoned for traveling to Syria and taking part in terrorist actions. This Life or the Next is Vitanza’s third book.

Alicia Kopf is the artistic name for Catalan writer Imma Ávalos. After her first individual exhibition at the Joan Prats Gallery in Barcelona, she participated in many collective exhibitions at CCCB and MACBA, or the Tàpies Foundation, amongst others. Her first novel, Germà de gel (L´Altra Editorial, 2016), has received several awards and will be published in nearly 10 languages.

Hadi Nasiri is an Iranian multidisciplinary artist and activist whose work involves painting, sculpture, film, graphic design, performance, and political protest. Hadi is the first artist to participate in the New York City Safe Haven Residency Program, a multi-organizational artist residency program designed to house, integrate, and support artists under threat.

Basma Abdel Aziz

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

Kanchana Ugbabe is an Indian-Nigerian Writer and scholar teaching creative writing at Fordham University. She is the New York City Safe Haven Prototype’s first Writer at Risk in Residence of the Fordham University’s English Department living in Westbeth. Kanchana work surrounds cross-cultural negotiations and ethno-religious conflict in the city of Jos, Nigeria. She spent a year as Scholar at Risk at Harvard University, and many years as professor of English at the University of Jos.

Ayşe Kulin is one of Turkey’s most beloved authors, with more than ten million copies of her books sold. In addition to penning internationally bestselling novels, she has worked as a producer, cinematographer, and screenwriter for numerous television shows and films. Her novel Last Train to Istanbul won the European Council Jewish Community Best Novel Award and has been translated into twenty-three languages.

Leni Zumas is the author of the story collection Farewell Navigator and the novel The Listeners, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. She is an associate professor in the MFA in Creative Writing program at Portland State University.

Co-presented with the Westbeth Artists Residents Council

Tickets: $20
Order tickets here: https://worldvoices.pen.org/session/literary-quest-westbeth-edition/