Twenty Summers

Jeffrey Yasuo Mansfield is a design director at MASS Design Group and a Ford-Mellon Disability Futures fellow, whose work explores the relationships between architecture, landscape, and power. Jeffrey is a recipient of a Graham Foundation grant and a John W. Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress for his work on Architecture of Deafness, which explores how Deaf schools and other Deaf Spaces e...

Interviewer: Brian Vines Maynard Monrow was born in Hollywood, California and currently lives in New York City. Monrow received his BFA and MFA from California Institute of the Arts. His work has been exhibited at numerous institutions and galleries including: The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Hollywood, FL; Gavlak Gallery LA and Palm Beach; Booth Gallery,...

Join author Claudia Rankine and filmmaker John Lucas for a screening of and Q&A about the latest in their Situations series.

Shaina Feinberg is a writer/director from New York City. Her book Every Body – a candid look at sex from every angle – came out in January 2021 from Little, Brown. Her bi-weekly column in The New York Times, "Scratch" is an illustrated look at the world of business. Shaina is also a filmmaker who specializes in micro-budget filmmaking. In 2019, she was named by Indiewire as 1 of 25 queer filmmaker...

Chanel Thervil is a Haitian American artist and educator that uses varying combinations of abstraction and portraiture to convene communal dialogue around culture, social issues, and existential questions. At the core of her practice lies a desire to empower and inspire tenderness and healing among communities of color through the arts. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Pace Unive...

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...

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 i...

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...

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...

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 Decembe...

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  bestsel...

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...

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...

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. In...

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,...

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 wi...

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.