Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts is the author of "Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America". The first volume of a planned trilogy on African-Americans and utopia (Harlem, Haiti and the Black Belt of the American south), it was a New York Times Notable Book of 2011, a National Book Critics Circle Finalist and cited by BOOKFORUM as the "Best New York Book" written in the twenty years since the magazine's founding. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Chimurenga, Bidoun, A Public Space, Creative Time Reports, Harper's, Essence and Vogue, among many others. She has received grants and awards from Creative Capital, the Whiting Foundation, the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the Lannan Foundation. Her 2015 book for young readers "Jake Makes a World: Jacob Lawrence a Young Artist in Harlem" (commissioned by MoMA and illustrated by Christopher Myers) was named by Booklist among the year's top books about art for children. Currently Writer in Residence at Pratt Institute's MFA program in Writing, Rhodes-Pitts organizes projects through The Freedwomen's Bureau, gathering collaborators across the fields of visual art, music, theater, film, and education to produce events at venues like Harlem Stage, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The New Museum, PS 1 / MoMA and public spaces in Harlem.
Dee Hibbert-Jones is an academy award nominated, a regional Emmy winning filmmaker and artist. She collaborates with Nomi Talisman on art, film and new media projects that look at the ways power structures and politics impact everyday lives. READ MORE
Nomi Talisman is an artist and filmmaker whose projects blend animation and documentary forms that challenge entrenched attitudes, unpack political issues and ask how people manage and who gets heard. Talisman is an Academy Award nominated filmmaker. Her film projects have screened at international film festivals and received multiple international awards including an Emmy, a Gideon Award, the 2016 Congressional Black Caucus Veterans Braintrust Award (nominee), a Center for Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award, an IDA award for Best Short Documentary (with Hibbert-Jones). READ MORE
