Twenty Summers

Through a series of exercises, Twenty Summers Fellow Brenda Zhang (Bz) guides participants in visual and spatial documentation of their individual experiences and narratives of Place, while exploring the shared meanings of “home” and “elsewhere.” Participants are invited to bring cartographic tools from their own traditions, diasporas, or fictions. Brenda Zhang (Bz) is a visual artist, designer, organizer, and educator based on unceded Tongva land (so-called Los Angeles). They are a core organizer with the Design As Protest Collective and Dark Matter University and a founding member of SPACE INDUSTRIES. In their practice, they investigate physical and cultural construction as entangled processes and use disciplinary tools of art and architecture to imagine futures beyond settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and cisheteropatriarchy. Bz received a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Visual Arts from Brown University. In their free time, th

As the Supreme Court was pondering whether to overturn Roe v. Wade early June 2022, journalist Joshua Prager discussed his recent book The Family Roe with activist and feminist scholar Dr. Felicia Kornbluh. Their conversation explores the history of abortion, the unknown lives at the heart of Roe, and the current state of reproductive rights in America. Dr. Felicia Kornbluh is a writer, activist, and professor who specializes in the histories of feminism, gender, social welfare, and reproductive politics. She is Professor of History and of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Vermont and the author or coauthor of three books, including the forthcoming A WOMAN’S LIFE IS A HUMAN LIFE: My Mother, Our Neighbor, and the Journey from Reproductive Rights to Reproductive Justice. For more than twenty years, Joshua Prager, a former senior writer for The Wall Street Journal, has written about historical secrets—revealing all from the hidden scheme that led to baseball’s most famous moment (Bobb

Washington, D.C. has always been a city of secrets. Few have been more dramatic than the ones revealed in James Kirchick’s Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. James Kirchick is joined by fellow writer Andrew Sullivan to explore how the secret “too loathsome to mention”, since FDR has shaped each successive presidential administration, impacting everything from the creation of America’s earliest civilian intelligence agency to the rise and fall of McCarthyism, the struggle for African American civil rights, and the conservative movement. “Scrupulously researched and novelistic in style, Secret City is an extraordinary achievement... Not since Robert Caro’s Years of Lyndon Johnson have I been so riveted by a work of history. Secret City is not gay history. It is American history.” —George Stephanopoulos James Kirchick is an award-winning journalist and author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age. A visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, he has reported fr

Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil (Ayutla Mixe, 1981) is a member of COLMIX, a collective of young Mixe people who carry out research and dissemination activities on Mixe language, history and culture. She studied Hispanic Language and Literature and completed a Master's degree in Linguistics at UNAM. She has collaborated in various projects on the dissemination of linguistic diversity, development of grammatical content for educational materials in indigenous languages, and documentation projects and attention to languages at risk of disappearing. She has been involved in the development of written material in Mixe and in the creation of Mixe-speaking readers and other indigenous languages. She has been involved in activism for the defense of the linguistic rights of indigenous language speakers, in the use of indigenous languages in the virtual world and in literary translation. She has also been involved in processes in defense of the environment.

Twenty Summers Presents Fran Lebowitz in Conversation with Brian Vines at the historic Hawthorne Barn in Provincetown, Massachusetts, June 12, 2021.

Bosq, Producer, DJ & Multi-instrumentalist, has been exploring the intersections of Afro-Latin music with Disco, Funk, Reggae, House and Hip Hop for years. Since 2013 and the release of his first album, his musicianship and craft have matured without losing any of the passion or imagination with which he approaches every project. His pursuit for collaborating authentically rather than simply appropriating musical styles from afar brought him first to Puerto Rico, where over a two week stay he recorded the entire Bosq y La Candela All-Stars - San Jose 51 in Old San Juan with legendary musicians like Tempo Alomar and Roberto Roena. Now, with 5 full original albums and countless remixes and singles under his belt (for labels as diverse and legendary as Ubiquity, Fania, Defected, Soul Clap and more), he creates and resides full time in Medellín, Colombia, one of the worlds most legendary musical melting pots. Bosq’s music has seen consistent play from the likes of Gilles Peterson & Craig Charles on the B

Mozelle Andrulot grew up in Eastham and attended Lesley University where she studied Liberal Arts. Her career has taken her to New York City and London where she performed at the SoHo House in both cities. Here on the Cape, she’s performed at Mahony’s, Tin Pan Alley, The Muse and regularly with Zoë Lewis’s Bootleggers show in Provincetown. She has graced the stage with local notable jazz artists Bruce Abbot, Fred Fried, Fred Boyle and John Thomas. This local jazz jewel, along with Doug Ricardi’s Jazz till Dawn, entertains audiences from Wellfleet’s Preservation Hall to the Yarmouth Cultural Center. This summer she will be singing outdoors regularly at the Fox and Crow. MikeMRF is a performing artist, recording artist, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter. His latest album Mob Music 2 hit #39 on the iTunes R&B Albums Chart and was featured on Apple Music. Album opener, "Tip Jar" landed in the Semi-Finals of the 2020 International Songwriting Competition and was featured in the Amazon Prime Show "30 The

Luna was a New York band formed in 1991 by singer/guitarist Dean Wareham after the breakup of Galaxie 500. The band made seven studio albums before disbanding in 2005. After a ten-year break, they reunited and toured in 2015, and in 2017 released a new LP — A Sentimental Education and an EP of instrumentals — A Place of Greater Safety. Other recent reissues include a deluxe 2xLP version of their classic Penthouse album (on Rhino) and another 2xLP set Lunafied that collects all the covers the band recorded in the 1990s. Now scattered around the country (Los Angeles, New York and Austin) the band retains the same lineup that operated from 1999 to 2005: Dean Wareham on vocals/guitar, his wife Britta Phillips on bass, Sean Eden on guitar, and Lee Wall on drums.

Bosq, Producer, DJ & Multi-instrumentalist, has been exploring the intersections of Afro-Latin music with Disco, Funk, Reggae, House and Hip Hop for years. Since 2013 and the release of his first album, his musicianship and craft have matured without losing any of the passion or imagination with which he approaches every project. His pursuit for collaborating authentically rather than simply appropriating musical styles from afar brought him first to Puerto Rico, where over a two week stay he recorded the entire Bosq y La Candela All-Stars - San Jose 51 in Old San Juan with legendary musicians like Tempo Alomar and Roberto Roena. Now, with 5 full original albums and countless remixes and singles under his belt (for labels as diverse and legendary as Ubiquity, Fania, Defected, Soul Clap and more), he creates and resides full time in Medellín, Colombia, one of the worlds most legendary musical melting pots. Bosq’s music has seen consistent play from the likes of Gilles Peterson & Craig Charles on the B

Twenty Summers presents Mal Blum LIVE at Truro Vineyards of Cape Cod, Truro, MA, August 14, 2021 -- Mal Blum, once dubbed “punk’s greatest hidden treasure” by Stereogum, cleverly crafted songs that are are as self-effacing as they are viscerally relatable. In 2019 they released their latest full length, Pity Boy (Don Giovanni), an album that explores boundary setting and self-sabotage, and an exemplification of Mal's ability to interrogate the human condition with lyrical ingenuity. Following that, they released a 7", Nobody Waits b/w San Cristóbal, with Saddle Creek Records' Document Series in 2020.

Twenty Summers presents Mozelle & Mike Flanagan (featuring Cliff Lechy) LIVE at Truro Vineyards of Cape Cod, Truro, MA, July 16, 2021 – Part 1 of 2 Mozelle Andrulot grew up in Eastham and attended Lesley University where she studied Liberal Arts. Her career has taken her to New York City and London where she performed at the SoHo House in both cities. Here on the Cape, she’s performed at Mahony’s, Tin Pan Alley, The Muse and regularly with Zoë Lewis’s Bootleggers show in Provincetown. She has graced the stage with local notable jazz artists Bruce Abbot, Fred Fried, Fred Boyle and John Thomas. This local jazz jewel, along with Doug Ricardi’s Jazz till Dawn, entertains audiences from Wellfleet’s Preservation Hall to the Yarmouth Cultural Center. This summer she will be singing outdoors regularly at the Fox and Crow. MikeMRF is a performing artist, recording artist, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter. His latest album Mob Music 2 hit #39 on the iTunes R&B Albums Chart and was featured on Apple Music

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, New York, NY; Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, NY and ACME Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2005). He has staged international performances in Rome, Italy, and participated in numerous projects including Ruffian’s Spring 2016 Ready-to-Wear Collection and LAX Art’s L.A.P.D. Billboard Project.

Brian Vines is a Chicagoan by birth and a New Yorker by choice. After completing the Masters Program in Broadcast Journalism at Boston University’s College of Communication he fetched coffee for some of the most respected journalists and news figures in the world during his tenure at CNN. After a stint in political communications Brian fell in love with his own reflection and reported for here! networks, NYC-TV, Brooklyn Independent Media, the internationally syndicated VJIAM show, and Broad Band Network3 among others. In addition to reporting, show running and producing Brian is also a skilled host and moderator of live events on topics ranging from contemporary memoir to police brutality. A dedicated cyclist, NPR subscriber, and podcast enthusiast, Brian can be spotted balling-on-a-budget, fighting the urge to binge watch and answering questions about his hair.

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 filmmakers to watch. She has directed two original series for Audible: Aliens of Extraordinary Ability, starring Maeve Higgins and Cristela Alonzo, and Phreaks, starring Christian Slater, Carrie Coon and Justice Smith. She is a visiting professor at the Vermont College of Fine Art in the MFA program for film. She lives in Brooklyn.

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

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 emerged as sites of cultural resistance. Jeffrey holds a Master of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and an AB in Architecture from Princeton University. Deaf since birth, Jeffrey is a Yonsei, or fourth-generation, Japanese American, and attended a deaf school in Massachusetts, where his earliest intuitions about the relationship between aesthetics, geography, and power emerged. Interpreting services provided by codabrothers.com

Raymond Antrobus was born in London to an English mother and Jamaican father. He is a Cave Canem Fellow and author of ‘The Perseverance’ and 'All The Names Given' both being published in the US this year by Tin House. His first children's picturebook 'Can Bears Ski?' illustrated by Polly Dunbar is published by Candlewick Press. His work has been featured on NPR, BBC, The Guardian, Lit Hub, POETRY Magazine among others. His accolades include a Ted Hughes Award, Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award, the Rathbone Folio Prize and he was awarded an MBE for his contribution to English language literature. He is currently based in Oklahoma City.

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 University and a Master’s Degree in Art Education from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She's been making a splash in Boston via her educational collaborations, public art, and residencies with institutions like The Museum of Fine Arts, The Boston Children's Museum, The DeCordova Museum, The Harvard Ed Portal, and The Cambridge Public Library. Her work has been featured by PBS Kids, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Bay State Banner, WBUR's ARTery, WGBH, and Hyperallergic.

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