Book publishing is ultimately about appreciating people: those writers, thinkers, artists, and activists whose voices we wish to honor. And there is no greater joy than to be with New Village authors. They always inveigle their way into becoming friends, even dear friends! Below I'm flanked by Rad Pereira and Jan Cohen-Cruz who visited the office to plan a rollout of their new book, Meeting the Moment. Top right is Margaret Randall at Howl Arts launching two (!) new books, Artists in My Life and Risking a Somersault in the Air, and happily I got to chat with Margaret during her short NYC visit. I also got to visit author Aviva Rahmani (further below) at her beloved island studio in Maine. Her memoir, Divining Chaos, arrives June 28th!
—Lynne Elizabeth, director
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Introducing Meeting the Moment:
Socially Engaged Performance, 1965–2020,
by Those Who Lived It
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“A reminder of what is possible when we return to our bodies, collective performance, and the poetic expression of social movements.”
~Niki Franco
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Authored by
Jan Cohen-Cruz and Rad Pereira
Meeting the Moment explores experiences of a diverse range of progressive theater and performance makers in the US, in their own words. Weaving stories from over 75 interviews and informal exchanges with critical reflections of their own, Jan Cohen-Cruz and Rad Pereira present the experiences of performance artists on the front lines of culture shift. The book offers insight into the field and reveals limitations due to discrimination and unequal opportunity for these artists. These voices from the field point to more diverse and inclusive practices and give hope for the future of the art.
Forewords by Carlton Turner and Jill Dolan
Paperback, 288 pages, 18 b/w photos
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Jan Cohen-Cruz (right), former NYU professor of drama and founder of the department’s applied theater minor, is also a past director of Imagining America and cofounder of its journal, Public. Her books include Local Acts, Engaging Performance, Remapping Performance, and two co-edited texts on Augusto Boal. Cohen-Cruz was director of field research for A Blade of Grass and an ATHE awardee for Leadership in Community-Based Theatre and Civic Engagement. She currently teaches at Touchstone Theatre, Moravian University.
Rad Pereira (left) is a queer (im)migrant artist and cultural worker building consciousness between healing justice, system change, reindigenization and queer futures based in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn). Rad is co-creator of YOU ARE HERE and a proud board member of Superhero Clubhouse, making theater to enact environmental justice. Rad’s work is supported by communities and institutions all over Turtle Island.
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Socially Engaged Art & Artists
with Rad Pereira and Jan Cohen-Cruz
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Meeting the Moment – Past, Present, & Into the Future
hosted by Pam Korza, Americans for the Arts
A platform for a conversation with socially engaged artists—the unique roles they play, challenges they face in intersectional work, and what they need to do that work effectively and in keeping with their values.
June 16 @ 3:00 P.M. ET
Register HERE (upper right corner)
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Introducing Divining Chaos
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“Aviva Rahmani’s remarkable Divining Chaos is part bildungsroman, part eco-action guidebook, part pandemic diary, and part portrait of a turbulent time in American art and history.”
~Eleanor Heartney
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A spirited memoir of artist, feminist, and environmental activist—
Aviva Rahmani
In this sharply political memoir, Aviva Rahmani tells her story through the unique lens of her trigger point theory, linking the damage that has been done to the environment to her own experiences as a woman. She details the history that led to two seminal projects: Ghost Nets, restoring a coastal town dump to flourishing wetlands, and The Blued Trees Symphony, which applied a novel legal theory to challenge natural gas pipelines about land use. Divining Chaos reveals the intimate experiences that shaped Rahmani’s life work. Her discussion of trigger point theory argues that we can predict, confront, and determine outcomes to today’s ecological challenges.
Foreword by Lucy R. Lippard
Paperback, 316 pages, 13 color & 6 b/w illus.
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Aviva Rahmani’s time-based ecoart projects on ocean health, fresh water, land restoration, and fire regimes are written about internationally. Places her work has been shown include the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the Hudson River Museum, the Cincinnati Center for Contemporary Art, the NeMe Arts Centre, and the Venice Biennale. Rahmani’s PhD is from Plymouth University, UK, and her Masters from CalArts. She is currently an Affiliate at the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder. Aviva now lives and works in Vinalhaven, Maine. Besides her forthcoming memoir, Divining Chaos, she is also a coeditor of Ecoart in Action.
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More Upcoming Author Events |
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Screening of Truth Tellers with Denise Altvater and Robert Shetterly
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PORTLAND (Maine) FRIENDS MEETING
June 2, 2022, 7:00 – 9:00 PM
Special screening and virtual talkback to benefit The Wabanaki Alliance will feature film subject Robert Shetterly and Denise Altvater, activist, community organizer, co-founder of the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
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Denise Altvater's portrait (left) is one of fifty truth tellers featured in Robert Shetterly's illustrated book, Portraits of Racial Justice.
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National Portrait Gallery portrait unveiling & documentary screening!
The film Truth Tellers will screen
Friday, July 8, 2022, 6:30 PM
In-Person
at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC
Meet filmmaker Richard Kane and film subject, painter Robert Shetterly
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See the newest of more than 250 portraits Rob has painted in his Americans Who Tell the Truth series.
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Margaret Randall: Artists in My Life
An in-person + online author event at 516 Arts, Albuquerque
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Thursday, June 30, 2022, 6:00–7:00 pm MT
Hear author Margaret Randall in conversation with Josie Lopez, Director of the Albuquerque Museum.
Hosted by Suzanne Sbarge, 516 Arts, 516 Central Ave SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102
Free in-person at 516 ARTS online
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Authors Honored & Translated |
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Kudos to Mary Gabriel, author of “Ninth Street Women,” on winning the 2022 NYU/Axinn Foundation Prize!
Mary Gabriel also wrote a foreword to the beautiful new, color-illustrated Artists in My Life by Margaret Randall, who was a close friend of artist Elaine de Kooning, featured in both authors' books.
As Gabriel writes in her foreword to Margaret's memoir, "It's like being invited to a banquet peopled with the myriad characters she has met and loved and learned from along the journey she calls her life. . . . we, the readers, become part of Margaret's expanding universe, and she becomes part of ours."
If you liked Gabriel's Ninth Street Women, don't miss Randall's intimate and illustrated Artists in My Life!
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The cover of Artists in My Life features Elaine de Kooning's 1960's portrait, "Meg Randall."
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A Creative Bravos Award to go to Margaret Randall |
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Thursday, June 2, beginning at 6:30 p.m. MT
Randall has received many national and international honors including the Medalla al Mérito Literario from the State of Chihuahua, Mexico; AWP's George Garrett Award; The Poet of Two Hemispheres Award in Quito, Ecuador; Cuba's Haydée Santamaría Medal; PEN New Mexico's Dorothy Doyle Lifetime Achievement Award; and the Paulo Freire Award from Chapman University in 2020.
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Polish edition of Visitors by feminist Ann Snitow just out
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We send our heartfelt thanks to Małgorzata (Gosia) Tarasiewicz for arranging a translation and the new Polish edition of Ann Snitow’s Visitors: An American Feminist in East Central Europe.
Original English edition of Visitors available HERE.
Also, note that the 2022 Ann Snitow Prize is still accepting nominations until July 15th. The annual $10,000 prize is awarded to "a person of extraordinary vision, originality, generosity, and accomplishment who is currently engaged in work in the U.S. that combines feminist intellectual and/or artistic pursuits with social justice activism."
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