Shastri Akella

Interdisciplinary Residency, Two-Week, Session I

Shastri Akella's is a writer and teacher. His debut novel "The Sea Elephants" has been published by Flatiron Books (USA, Canada) and Penguin (India). He was a writing resident at the Fine Arts Works Center (2021) and the Oak Springs Garden Foundation (2023). He's winner of 2022 FracturedLit Flash Fiction Contest and the 2023 Best Microfiction Contest. His writing has appeared in Guernica, Fairy Tale Review, CRAFT, The Masters Review, Electric Literature, World Literature Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing and PhD. in Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He's an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Michigan State University.

Saretta Morgan

Interdisciplinary Resident, Session V, 2021

Saretta is a writer and poet, currently based in Mohave Valley, AZ. In her poetry, she “challenges the images produced and normalized through anti-Black economic, biological, and mythological narratives.” Her work is heavily influenced by place, and she is greatly inspired by the Mohave and Sonoran deserts.

Jacob Olmedo, Session III

Interdisciplinary Resident, 2021

Jacob is an environmentalist and multidisciplinary artist currently based in Brooklyn, NY. They work with textiles, fashion, and living plants. 

Willow Curry

Interdisciplinary Resident, Session V, 2021

Willow is a journalist, essayist, and narrative strategist who was raised and currently works in Houston, TX. Her writing addresses the “misrepresentation and suppression of Black lives,” especially in relation to environmental racism. To learn more about her work visit https://www.willowncurry.com/

Brien Beidler

Interdisciplinary Resident, Session IV, 2021

Brien is a bookbinder and toolmaker.  He draws inspiration from European books from the 17th and 18th centuries, and often his work features designs inspired by plants.  To learn more about Brien’s work, visit https://www.beidlermade.com/

Katie Beidler

Interdisciplinary Resident, Session IV, 2021

Katie is an ecologist and PhD candidate at the University of Indiana at Bloomington.  She researches “ how plant-microbe interactions influence ecosystem processes, specifically decomposition and nutrient cycling.”

Yi Hsuan Sung

Interdisciplinary Resident, Session IV, 2021

Yi Hsuan is a textile artist, raised in Taiwan and currently working in Forest Hills, New York.  Her work “integrates materials innovation, handcraft and technology to create sustainable textiles systems. My goal is to bridge art, nature, science and technology in the design and making of textiles.” To learn more visit https://yihsuansung.com

Angela Drakeford

Interdisciplinary Resident, Session III, 2021

Angela creates garden installations and she describes her practice in this way, “My practice is about offering hospitality, guidance, care, and gestures of love.”  Her work is a response to social and societal injustices that disproportionately impact marginalized and at-risk communities.  Her installations respond by creating spaces of “respite, calm, relaxation, beauty and knowledge sharing.”  To learn more about her work, visit www.angeladrakeford.com.

L. Renée

Interdisciplinary Resident, Session III, 2021

L. is a poet, currently based in Columbus, OH.  Her poetry “[engages] with Black identity, lineage, the body, Appalachian landscape and nourishment.”  She draws from oral histories, archives, and genealogical research, and “Black joy” is a central theme in her work.

Connie Zheng

Interdisciplinary Resident, Session III, 2021

Connie is an interdisciplinary visual artist and PhD Candidate in Visual Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work examines “diverse manifestations of propaganda, possibilities for expanding the language of climate apocalypse, and the racialization of contamination narratives, as told through visual and text-based forms.” To learn more about Connie, visit http://www.conniezheng.com

Janisse Ray

Interdisciplinary Resident, Session III, 2021

Janisse is a writer “whose subject most often falls into the borderland of nature and culture.” She lives on an organic farm near Savannah, GA, and has written five non-fiction books as well as a book of eco-poetry. Currently, she is working on a book about pine-meadow bogs that occur within Southern coastal plains and their diverse plant life, particularly carnivorous plants. To learn more about her, visit https://www.janisseray.com.

Torrey Crim

Interdisciplinary Resident, Session III, 2021

Torrey is a fiction writer, based in Brooklyn, NY.  She describes her writing in this way, “A sense of movement haunts my fiction; my stories are often written through the lens of a visitor, and they address the question of how personal history connects and diverges from cultural history, how we appropriate (rightly or wrongly) identity from the places we inhabit.” Learn more about her work at www.torreycrim.com.

Jordan Coscia

Researcher in Residence, Session III, 2021

Jordan is an ecologist and PhD Candidate at Virginia Tech University.  Her dissertation focuses on grassland ecology, and aims to “improve our understanding of grassland restoration ecology and management in Virginia using long-term ecological data from plant, arthropod, and soil communities collected across three field sites.”

Kate Klingbeil

Socially Distanced Residency, Summer 2021

Kate is a painter currently based in Brooklyn, New York.  Her work explores the ways in which human beings and the natural world are connected, with her recent paintings reflecting how the human body mirrors systems in nature.  Kate plans to use her residency to work on a stop-motion animation for her solo exhibition at the Hesse Flatow Gallery in New York City.  To learn more about her work, visit www.kateklingbeil.com

Cecil Howell

Socially Distanced Residency, Summer 2021

Cecil is an artist and landscape architect currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work is “an exploration of place: how it evolves, how we connect with it, and how we can design it.” During her residency, she plans to explore the relationship between gardens and gardeners and the hope that can emerge from these reciprocal relationships.  To learn more about Cecil, visit www.cecilhowell.com

Carson Ellis

Socially Distanced Resident, Summer 2021

Carson is a plant conservation biologist and horticulturist who received her Masters of Science in Biology at Western Carolina University (WCU) in Cullowhee, North Carolina. While at Oak Spring, she worked on research on high elevation rock outcropping floral visitation networks for her masters thesis.

Clio Doyle

Socially Distanced Residency, Spring 2021

Clio Doyle is a PhD Candidate in English and Renaissance Studies at Yale University.  Their dissertation, “Rough Beginnings: Imagining the Origins of Agriculture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain,” argues that these periods in British history were, because of environmental crises such as Enclosure and the colonization and development of the Americas, periods of urgent attention to the relationship between humans and the environment.”

Quynh Lam

  Visual Artist in Residence, Socially Distanced Residency, 2021

Quynh is currently an MFA candidate in Studio Art at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her work, which spans performance, installation, video, and mixed media, is inspired by ecology, feminism, and plant matter.  Learn more about her work at https://www.quynh-lam.com/

Beshouy Botros

Researcher in Residence, Socially Distanced Residency, 2021

Beshouy is a researcher who examines processes of racialization by telling the connected imperial histories.  Currently, they are working on a project that explores the cotton trade between Egypt and the United States during the United States Civil War and how it contributed to broader, global racial discourses. To learn more about them, visit https://www.nnaac.org/beshouy_botros. 

Evan Galbicka

Visual Artist in Residence, Socially Distanced Residency, 2021

Evan  is an artist currently based in Gainesville, Florida.  The sculptures, installation, and ecological inventions he creates are inspired by the interconnected worlds of plant, animal, and mineral. His current project, Pulp Gardens, is an interspecies collaboration and installation that invites visitors and the public to learn and engage with it.

https://www.egalbicka.com/