This season at the Artist’s Institute, we’re writing and talking. Ten writers are coming to give workshops, seminars, and talks, especially with visual artists in mind. Percival Everett, Dan Fox, Mary Gaitskill, Rivka Galchen, Wayne Koestenbaum, Ben Lerner, Fred Moten, and Maggie Nelson are all coming. Hollis Frampton is coming (sort of). Sasha Frere-Jones is leading a writing workshop for Hunter graduate students you can follow online. Morgan Bassichis is in residence, preparing for performances at the Kitchen and Abrons Arts Center with a baby grand piano we hauled in just for them, though we’ve got some ideas for it too. Sign up for a workshop, come to a talk—read and write with us this fall!

 

Participants

Percival Everett is the author of more than twenty books, including Assumption, Erasure, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, The Water Cure, Wounded, and Glyph; three collections of short fiction; and one book of poetry. He is the recipient of the Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the 2006 PEN USA Center Award for Fiction. Everett is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

Dan Fox is a filmmaker, writer, and musician. He is the author of Pretentiousness: Why It Matters, and numerous essays and interviews for museum catalogues and international art publications. His latest book, Limbo, is out this fall with Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Mary Gaitskill is the author of three novels, The Mare, Two Girls, Fat and Thin, and Veronica (a National Book Award finalist); three collections of short stories; and a book of essays. Gaitskill is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her work has been included in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and Esquire.

Rivka Galchen is author of the novel Atmospheric Disturbances, the short story collection American Innovations, and Little Labors, a compendium of observations, stories, lists, and brief essays about babies and literature. Her fiction and essays have appeared The Believer, Harper’s, The New Yorker, Scientific American and The New York Times. Galchen teaches writing at Columbia University.

Wayne Koestenbaum is the author of nineteen books of poetry, criticism, and fiction, including Camp Marmalade, Hotel Theory, My 1980s, and The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire. He is the recipient of the Whiting Award, and is a Distinguished Professor in English at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Ben Lerner is the author of two internationally acclaimed novels, Leaving the Atocha Station and 10:04. He has published three poetry collections: The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw (a finalist for the National Book Award), and Mean Free Path. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations. Lerner is a professor of English at Brooklyn College.  

Fred Moten is author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition; Hughson’s Tavern, B. Jenkins, The Feel Trio, The Little Edges, The Service Porch and consent not to be a single being. He is co-author, with Stefano Harney, of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study and A Poetics of the Undercommons and, with Wu Tsang, of Who touched me? Moten teaches in the Department of Performance Studies at New York University.

Maggie Nelson is the author of nine books of poetry and prose, many of which have become cult classics defying categorization. Her nonfiction titles include The Argonauts (National Book Award winner), The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning, Bluets, The Red Parts: A Memoir, and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions. Her poetry titles include Something Bright, Then Holes and Jane: A Murder. Nelson is a Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

Morgan Bassichis is a comedic performer whose shows have been described as “out there” (by Morgan’s mother) and “super intense” (by Morgan). Morgan has performed at Artists Space, MoMA PS1, Poetry Project, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Whitney Museum. Recent projects include a musical adaptation of Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta’s 1977 manifesto-fairytale, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions, at the New Museum, and More Protest Songs! at Danspace Project. Morgan has received support from Art Matters, BOFFO, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), Queer/Art/Mentorship, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Morgan lives in New York City, and has published essays in the Radical History Review, Captive Genders, and other anthologies.