The Parent-Artist: A Panel Discussion
Please join us for a panel of parent writers, artists, and musicians. Moderated by Catherine Ricketts (C'09), author of the forthcoming The Mother Artist, the panel will explore questions about what it takes to create while taking on the many joys – and obligations – of care. Panelists include Nate Chinen (C’97), Lauren Francis-Sharma (C’94), Natalie Eve Garrett (GFA’04), Aimee Koran (GFA’17), and Joseph Earl Thomas (G’24).
NATE CHINEN (C'97) is the author of Playing Changes: Jazz For the New Century. He served as the first assistant coordinator at the Kelly Writers House, before becoming a columnist for JazzTimes and a music critic for The New York Times. Nate is now editorial director at WRTI, a regular contributor to NPR, and proprietor of The Gig, a Substack publication. A thirteen-time winner of the Helen Dance–Robert Palmer Award for Excellence in Writing, he is also coauthor of George Wein's Myself Among Others: A Life in Music.
LAUREN FRANCIS-SHARMA (C’94) is the author of Book of the Little Axe, the 2020 ALA “Libraries Transform Book Pick” and a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction. Her first novel, Til the Well Runs Dry was awarded the Honor Fiction Prize by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and short-listed for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Lauren is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan Law School, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her next novel, Casualties of Truth, based on her time at the Truth and Reconciliation Hearings in South Africa, will be published by Grove/Atlantic in February. Lauren is a book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle and a MacDowell Fellow. She serves on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, and is the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference at Middlebury College.
NATALIE EVE GARRETT (GFA’04) is an artist and a writer. She's the editor of The Lonely Stories, a cathartic collection of personal essays from 22 celebrated writers about the joys and struggles of being alone, out now from Catapult. She's also the editor of Eat Joy (Catapult, 2019), a collection of stories exploring how food can help us cope in dark times, and The Artists’ and Writers Cookbook (pH Books, 2016), a collection of stories with recipes. A graduate of Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design, Natalie lives with her husband, two children, and their puppy, Zephyr, in a little town near DC, along the Potomac River.
AIMEE KORAN (GFA’17) is a multi-disciplinary artist based out of Philadelphia, PA. She holds a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelors degree in Fine Arts with a minor in textile design from Moore College of Art & Design. Aimee explores the topic of motherhood focusing on the continuously shifting and complex binaries that shape the role. Her work has been shown around the globe in venues such as the Richard Saulton Gallery, London, UK; Mutter Museum, Philadelphia, PA; The Arlington Art Center, Arlington, VA; and completed residencies at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA; The Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY; and Project for Empty Space, Newark, NJ. Her solo and group exhibitions have been featured in publications like The New York Times, Vogue, Whitewall, Artslant, Artnet News, and A Woman’s Thing. Aimee’s work was recently acquired for addition to the permanent contemporary collection at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
CATHERINE RICKETTS (C’09) writes about the arts, grief, joy, and spirituality. She studied writing at the University of Pennsylvania and holds an MFA in nonfiction from Seattle Pacific University. Her essays have appeared in The Kenyon Review Online, The Christian Century, Image, The Millions, Paste, and the Ploughshares blog, among other publications. While writing, she has supported the work of other practicing artists as a live arts presenter, having held jobs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia's FringeArts, and the public radio station WXPN. Ricketts lives with her family near Philadelphia and works in the Villanova University Honors Program. Find her on Instagram at @bycatherinericketts.
JOSEPH EARL THOMAS (G’24) is a writer from Frankford whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in VQR, N+1, Gulf Coast, The Offing, and The Kenyon Review. He has an MFA in prose from The University of Notre Dame and is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Pennsylvania. An excerpt of his memoir, Sink, won the 2020 Chautauqua Janus Prize and he has received fellowships from Fulbright, VONA, Tin House, and Bread Loaf. He’s writing the novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, and a collection of stories: Leviathan Beach, among other oddities.
