Yaddo NYC 2025

Michael R. Jackson was one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2022. His Pulitzer Prize- and New York Drama Critics Circle-winning A Strange Loop (which had its 2019 world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in association with Page 73 Productions) received 11 Tony nominations in 2022, and was called "a full-on laparoscopy of the heart, soul, and loins" as well as a "gutsy, jubilantly anguished musical with infectious melodies" by Ben Brantley for The New York Times. In addition to A Strange Loop, he wrote book, music and lyrics for White Girl in Danger, and book and lyrics for Teeth which opened at New World Stages in Fall 2024. Awards include a Whiting Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, and an Obie Award, among others.

Jennifer Egan’s 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach, was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was chosen as New York City’s One Book One New York read. Her previous novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was on the list of Best Books of the 21^st Century in The New York Times. Her new novel, The Candy House, a companion to A Visit From the Goon Squad, was one of the New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2022 and one of President Obama’s favorite reads of the year. Also a journalist, she recently spent a year writing on street homelessness and supportive housing for The New Yorker.  She has served as President of PEN America.

Amity Gaige is the bestselling author of five novels, O My Darling (2005), The Folded World (2007), Schroder (2013), Sea Wife (2020) and Heartwood (2025). Heartwood has been called “the best thriller of the year” by The Boston Globe, a Best Book of the Year So Far overall and a Best Crime Book of the Year So Far by The New York Times, a Top 20 of 2025 So Far by the editors at Amazon, and was Jenna Bush Hager's book club pick for April 2025 on the TODAY Show. Heartwood was a national bestseller and #1 on The Boston Globe bestseller list. Amity has appeared on some of the biggest literary stages, from the LA Times Book Festival, the National Book Festival in D.C., and the Rome Festival of International Literature. She is a 2016 Guggenheim recipient.

Sidra Bell is a renowned choreographer, dancer, performance artist, and the founder and artistic director of Sidra Bell Dance New York, an internationally recognized company known for innovative, progressive dance theater. She first came to Yaddo in 2022. With a career spanning over two decades, Bell has created more than 100 original works for major companies and institutions, including Ailey II, ODC/Dance, The Juilliard School, and New York City Ballet—where she made history as the first Black woman to choreograph for the company. A former Master Lecturer at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Bell has also held academic positions at Harvard, University of Oklahoma, and Barnard, among others. Her pedagogical approach, Contemporary Systems—an interior & material approach, is internationally respected and has been featured in Dance Magazine and Dance Teacher Magazine. She is the creative director of MODULE, a NYC-based immersive laboratory for movement and theater artists. She has collaborated with fashion and media outlets including Interview Magazine, T Magazine, and Cero Magazine. She was featured on the Today Show in the segment “How choreographer Sidra Bell is blazing a trail for next generation.” Celebrated for her fearless exploration of form, identity, and innovation, Bell continues to be a powerful voice in contemporary performance.

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) was a pioneering American poet, novelist, playwright, and social activist, best known as a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance—a cultural movement celebrating African American artistic expression in the 1920s and '30s. Born in Joplin, Missouri, and raised in various Midwestern towns, Hughes developed an early love for books and storytelling. He studied briefly at Columbia University before traveling widely, experiences that shaped his global outlook and deeply informed his writing. Hughes was a writer in residence at Yaddo in 1942 and 1943. His work is celebrated for its vibrant, jazz-inflected rhythms and its honest portrayal of Black life in America. A prolific writer, Hughes published numerous volumes of poetry, short stories, plays, essays, and novels, including the beloved Simple stories, which chronicled the everyday lives and struggles of working-class Black Americans with humor and insight. He was also an early advocate for the importance of Black vernacular in literature, helping to elevate everyday speech into lyrical, literary art. Throughout his career, Hughes remained committed to social justice and used his platform to highlight issues of racism, inequality, and identity. His accessible style and unwavering dedication to portraying the dignity and complexity of Black life left a lasting impact on American literature and culture.

Jill Viney is a sculptor and writer who lives in New York City. She attended L’Ecole Julian in Paris, and Sarah Lawrence College, receiving her Master’s from Columbia’s School of the Arts. Viney’s materials are molded fiberglass and plexiglas; she combines organic form with translucent material to produce interior light and space. Her work, shown in the 2016 Sarah Lawrence College catalogue and in New York City by Trans Hudson and Joyce Goldstein galleries, was included in “Fabricated Nature” organized by the Boise Museum of Art. In “Form and Space” at New Jersey’s Hunterdon Museum Viney’s sculpture, “Baja” was singled out in The New York Times by art critic, Barry Schwabsky. She has received two outdoor commissions: the first, “Dwelling,” at the Saint Louis Campus, University of Missouri, the second, “Barrow,” at Herron School of Art, IUPUI, Indianapolis. In the first, the visitor was surrounded by luminous color; in the second he/she experienced a black space with bright concentric circles above, as in the evening sky. Viney is a Yaddo artist and member of the board.