Twenty Summers

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 Camer

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 Lik

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, wi

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 mu

Twenty Summers was thrilled to welcome author & journalist Jenna Wortham in residence at the Hawthorne Barn this past September, 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.For more virtual arts programming please visit https://www.20summers.org 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

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 SeasonThe 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

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 w

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 200

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).**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 Mountai

Recorded by Twenty Summers on August 18, 2020. All Rights Reserved.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 impacted 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 sto

Recorded at the Hawthorne barn on August 3, 2019 by Twenty Summers. All Rights Reserved. 

"Meet Jeremy O. Harris: The Queer Black Savior the Theater World Needs." So read a recent headline in Out magazine; Vogue anointed him “one of the most promising playwrights of his generation." The hype is understandable. Though still in his final semester at Yale Drama School while this conversation was filmed, Harris has had two plays in production Off Broadway before runaway Broadway success with SlavePlay. Daddy, the second, stars Alan Cumming and Ronald Peet. Joining him on our very own stage to discuss his work and career was cultural critic Emily Bobrow, who observed in the Economist that Harris writes about race and sexuality "with humour, intellectual rigour, nods to pop culture and an engaging sense of spectacle," asking audiences to confront their own complicity in prejudice.Recorded at the Hawthorne barn on June 8, 2019 by Twenty Summers. All Rights Reserved.

Recorded at the Hawthorne barn on May 31, 2019 by Twenty Summers. All Rights Reserved. 

Recorded at the Hawthorne barn on June 15, 2019 by Twenty Summers. All Rights Reserved.

Recorded at the Hawthorne barn on June 15, 2019 by Twenty Summers. All Rights Reserved.

Recorded at the Hawthorne barn on May 17, 2019 by Twenty Summers. All Rights Reserved.

Recorded at the Hawthorne barn on June 7, 2019 by Twenty Summers. All Rights Reserved.

Recorded at the Hawthorne barn on June 7, 2019 by Twenty Summers. All Rights Reserved.

Recorded at the Hawthorne barn on May 26, 2019 by Twenty Summers. All Rights Reserved.

Recorded at the Hawthorne barn on May 25, 2019 by Twenty Summers. All Rights Reserved.