Sam Butin (he/him) is a writer/narrative designer. His work blends cinematic storytelling with game design to explore stories of revolution, gentrification, climate change, racial injustice, and more through the mechanics of gamification. His past projects include: 1979 Revolution: Black Friday (BAFTA, SXSW, Facebook Game of the Year), HERO (Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Festival Winner) and Fire Escape: An Interactive Narrative Series (NYFF, Tribeca, VIFF). He has developed original stories for partners including Google, Verizon, Eko & The Brown Institute.

Lee Conell (she/her) is the author of the novel The Party Upstairs (Penguin Press), which was awarded the Wallant Award, and the story collection Subcortical (Johns Hopkins University Press), which was awarded The Story Prize Spotlight Award and an Independent Publisher Book Award. She’s the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Japan-US Creative Artist Program, Yaddo, Willapa Bay AiR, Millay Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her stories and essays–which appear in ZYZZYVA, Guernica, Oxford American, Kenyon Review, Jewish Currents, Paris Review daily, Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction online, and elsewhere–have received the Nelson Algren Award from the Chicago Tribune, and have been shortlisted in Best American Short Stories and the Pushcart Prize anthology. She is a writer mentor with Visible Ink at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program, and has taught creative writing at Tufts University, Vanderbilt University, and Sewanee: The University of the South.

Laura Elkeslassy (she/her) is a singer, theater maker, spiritual leader and educator based in Brooklyn. Born and raised in France, with Moroccan and Israeli roots, Laura’s work focuses on reclaiming the North African Jewish folk and liturgical musical heritage from a feminist standpoint. In 2021, she released the multimedia project Ya Ghorbati: Divas in Exile. Developed in collaboration with Ira Khonen Temple, Ya Ghorbati weaves together the music and stories of Judeo-Arab divas from mid-century North Africa. Laura has performed music at countless venues including Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the World Music Institute. She was the lead singer fo the New York Andalus Ensemble for 5 years, where she started performing in Hebrew, Arabic, and Ladino in 2015. In the theater, she has worked at the National Opera of Paris the Venice Film Festival, La MaMa ETC, Here Arts Center, Target Margin, among others. As a spiritual leader, Laura has been active in developing Egalitarian Sephardi practice in New York, Boston and Paris over the last four years. Laura has taught sacred and folk music across the country, including at Yale University, Pratt University, and Hebrew Union College, as well as internationally at Segal Performance Center, Limud UK, and beyond. Laura holds an MFA in Acting from Columbia University and is a multiple-time recipient of the Rise Up! Fellowship, the New Jewish Culture Fellowship, the Rising Leader Fellowship with the Open Society Foundation, and a multi-year grantee of Brooklyn Arts Council. Last year, Laura was selected as one of New York Jewish Week’s 36 to Watch.

Liana Finck (she/her) is the author of several books, including Let There Be Light (Random House, 2022), an adaptation of the Book of Genesis with a female God, and A Bintel Brief (Ecco, 2014), and is a contracted New Yorker cartoonist. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Jewish Book Award, an Edward Lewis Wallant Award, a Fulbright Fellowship, a NYFA Fellowship, and a Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists. She’s had artist residencies with the American Academy in Berlin, MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. She teaches creative nonfiction at Barnard College. She plans to use her time in the fellowship to work on a tongue-in-cheek etiquette guide called What to Do When (Random House, 2026), which will draw from Jewish sets of rules for living life, among other things. Photo credit: Jorge Colombo

Igor Golyak (he/him) is the founder and producing artistic director of Arlekin Players Theater and Zero Gravity (zero-G) Virtual Theater Lab in Boston. A global leader in the virtual theater movement, he is currently directing The Orchard Off-Broadway, a hybrid production (both live and virtual), featuring Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov. During the pandemic he conceived and directed WITNESS, chekhovOS /an experimental game/ and State vs. Natasha Banina, each of which became international virtual theater sensations, receiving multiple New York Times Critic’s Picks and garner a 2022 Special Citation from the Boston Critic’s Association for “pushing the boundaries of digital space to create a new genre of theater.” Golyak’s work has received numeros Elliot Norton Awards for The Seagull, The Stone, and Dead Man’s Man’s Diary, including an award for Best Director. His work also received This Week In New York Pandemic Awards (WITNESS and chekhovOS). He directed The Merchant of Venice for Actors’ Shakespeare Project, productions at Northeastern University and Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and has taught at Boston Conservatory, Boston University, Harvard University, Lesley College, Wellesley College, New England Theater Conference, the Russian Academy of Theater Arts/Middlesex University, Moscow Specialized Institute for the Arts, and the ARBOS Theatre Festival. Golyak is from Ukraine, and with his team at Arlekin, has led the #Artists4Ukraine initiative, engaging artists to share messages of hope, peace and solidarity, and raising funds for humanitarian aid for Ukraine.

Frieda Vizel (she/her) grew up in the Satmar village of Kiryas Joel, the fifth of fitteen children. After an arranged marriage an young motherhood, Vizel embarked on a journey to find a new place in the world. Although she is no longer Hasidic, she carries with her the deep history and culture of her formative years. She has a passion for understanding human societies–specifically Hasidic culture–which she shares with a humanizing warmth. Since 2013, she has been leading thousands of people in small-group educational tours through Hasidic Brooklyn. She also runs a popular YouTube channel where she explores Hasidic food, architecture, art, technology and conducts intimate interviews. Her work is appreciated by Hasidim and non-Hasidim alike. She is the recipient of the 2023 NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre award. Her work has been reviewed in many major media outlets, including The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, Brooklyn Eagle, Times of Israel and the Jewish Daily Forverts. 

Netta Yerushalmy (she/her) is a choreographer and performer based in new York City. Her research-based dance-making is propelled by a passion for, and trust in, the body as a site of ineluctable knowledge. Her work is aesthetically and ethically committed to generating questions, rather than answers. Recognized with a 2022 United States Artists Fellowship, Yerushalmy was also awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Princeton Arts Fellowship, as well as fellowships from the New York Public Library, Center for Ballet and the Arts, New York City Center, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, National Dance Project, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and New York Foundation for the Arts. Her work has been presented by venues such as Jacob’s Pillow, Joyce Theater, American Dance Festival, New York Live Arts, Hebbel am Ufer, PEAK Performances, Wexner, and the Guggenheim Museum, to name a few. She received development support from organizations including Baryshnikov Arts Center, Watermill Center, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, and Bogliasco Foundation. Netta works across genres and disciplines: she contributed to sculptor Josiah McElheny’s Prismatic Park, choreographed a Red hot Chili Peppers music video, worked with cellist Maya Beiser and composer Julia Wolfe on Spinning, and collaborated on evenings of theory and performance at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin. Netta has danced and toured internationally with Doug Varone and Dancers, Pam Tanowitz Dance, Joanna Kotze, and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. She grew up in Galilee, Israel, and received her BFA in Dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she is currently on faculty.