I Am America

ACTORS & ARTISTS

Julia Alvarez is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer best known for her novels How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, and her most recent work Afterlife. She has published numerous collections of poetry and works of non-fiction, including The Woman I Kept to Myself and A Wedding in Haiti: The Story of a Friendship. In addition to her adult works, she has written many books for young readers, including the Tía Lola Stories series, Before We Were Free, and Where Do They Go? A recipient of a 2013 National Medal of Arts and many other awards and honors, Alvarez is one of the founders of Border of Lights, a movement to promote peace and collaboration between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Ellen Burstyn’s illustrious sixty-year acting career encompasses film, stage, and television. She is the winner of the Academy Award for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore; the Tony Award for Same Time, Next Year; and two Emmy Awards for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Political Animals, among her many nominations. Her film and television credits include The Last Picture Show, The Exorcist, Resurrection, Requiem for a Dream, Big Love, Flowers in the Attic, Interstellar, The Age of Adaline, House of Cards, Nostalgia, The Tale, American Woman, and Lucy in the Sky. On stage, she most recently appeared in the Classic Stage Company’s revival of As You Like It. Burstyn’s best-selling memoir, Lessons in Becoming Myself, was published in 2006.

Crystal Dickinson won the Theatre World Award for her Broadway debut in the 2012 production of Clybourne Park. She subsequently appeared in You Can’t Take It With You on Broadway in 2014, A Raisin in the Sun at the Two River Theater, The Low Road at the Public Theater, and most recently Gnit with the Theatre for a New Audience. Her film and television credits include House of Payne, I Origins, This Is Where I Leave You, The Good Wife, Feed the Beast, Collateral Beauty, New Amsterdam, and The Chi. Dickinson has taught at Stella Adler Studio, Spelman College, Pace University, Princeton University, and both of her alma maters, University of Illinois and Seton Hall. She currently teaches acting at the Juilliard School.

Jennifer Ikeda’s stage appearances, both on and off-Broadway, include Titus Andronicus, Macbeth, As You Like It with the Public Theater, Vietgone, Top Girls, Linda with Manhattan Theatre Club, and most recently, King Philip’s Head… with Clubbed Thumb. She has also been featured on Blue Bloods, New Amsterdam, Maniac, Tell Me a Story, the forthcoming Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares, and the films Advantageous and Swing, among others. Ikeda has narrated dozens of audiobooks and has been honored with two Audie Awards.

Mary E. Ashe Lee (1850 - 1932) was a poet, widely read and praised in her time for her emotionally resonant and culturally rich verse. Her works recount the distinct historical experience of the archetypal African American woman of the era.

Khris Lewin recently appeared in La Mama ETC’s production of Extreme Whether. Additional New York theater credits include Personnel Best at the Secret Theatre in Long Island City, Horatio in the world premiere of Boris Akunin’s Hamlet. A Version at the Theatre at St. Clements, Private Life of the Master Race with the Roust Theatre Company, Oliver! at Harbor Lights, Richard II with Fight or Flight, and Fêtes de la Nuit with the Ohio Theatre.

Selenis Leyva is best known for her work on Orange Is the New Black as Gloria Mendoza. Additional film and television credits include featured roles on Law & Order, Blue Bloods, Girls, Madam Secretary, Veep, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Dietland, Maniac, Murphy Brown, DuckTales, and Diary of a Future President. Leyva appeared in the 2017 production of Tell Hector I Miss Him with the Atlantic Theater Company. She is the co-author of the recently published memoir My Sister: How One Sibling's Transition Changed Us Both.

Susan Minot is the author of the novels Monkeys, winner of the Prix Femina Étranger, Folly, Evening, Rapture, and Thirty Girls, as well as the poetry collection Poems 4 A.M., the short story collection Lust and Other Stories, and the play On Island. She was honored with a Pushcart Prize, and her stories have appeared in TheBest American Short Stories, the O. Henry Prize Stories, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Grand Street, Fiction, and Swink, among other publications. Minot has taught writing at New York University, Stony Brook Southampton, and Columbia University.

Maulik Pancholy is an actor, author, and activist. He is best known for his television roles on 30 Rock, Weeds, Whitney, The Good Fight, and for lending his voice to the long-running animated series Phineas & Ferb and Sanjay & Craig. He starred on Broadway in Terrence McNally’s It's Only a Play and in The New Group’s production of Good for Otto. He recently returned to Broadway in Bess Wohl’s Grand Horizons at the Helen Hayes Theatre. Pancholy’s debut novel, The Best at It, was named a Stonewall Honor Book and received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and American Library Association’s Booklist. Pancholy is the co-founder of the anti-bullying organization ActToChange.org.

Kaneza Schaal is a New York City-based theater artist. She has worked on stage with Elevator Repair Service, The Wooster Group, Richard Maxwell/New York City Players, and New York City Opera. This work brought her to venues including Centre Pompidou, Royal Lyceum Theater Edinburgh, The Whitney Museum, BAM, and MoMA. On camera, she has worked with Kathryn Bigelow, Marya Cohn, Josephine Decker, Chelsea Knight, and the Law & Order team. Schaal directed Go Forth, which premiered at Performance Space 122’s COIL Festival, and Jack &, a multimedia performance piece she created in collaboration with Cornell Alston, co-commissioned by PICA, Walker Arts Center, REDCAT, On The Boards, and Center for Contemporary Art Cincinnati. Schaal’s performance art piece, CARTOGRAPHY, was workshopped through New Victory Theater Lab, NYU Abu Dhabi and premiered at The Kennedy Center in 2019, and she most recently directed Triptych (Eyes of One on Another), which premiered at LA Philharmonic, The Power Center in Ann Arbor, MI, and showed at BAM Opera House and The Holland Festival.

Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge, which was adapted into an Emmy-winning HBO series starring Frances McDormand, as well as The Burgess Boys, a New York Times bestseller, Abide with Me, a national bestseller and BookSense pick, Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, My Name Is Lucy Barton, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and Anything Is Possible, winner of the Story Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in England. Her short stories have been published in The New Yorker, O: The Oprah Magazine, and many other periodicals. Strout’s most recent novel, Olive, Again, was published in 2019.

Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman (1870 - c. 1922) was a prolific writer whose poems, short fiction, plays, and journalism appeared in The Christian Recorder, American Baptist, Our Women and Children, and the Indianapolis Freeman, among other periodicals. Her fiction includes Beryl Weston's Ambition: The Story of an Afro-American Girl's Life, Clancy Street, and the historical plays Thirty Years of Freedom and Fifty Years of Freedom. Her book of poetry, Recitations, was published in 1902. Tillman edited the Women’s Missionary Recorder and served as an officer in the National Association of Colored Women.

Sojourner Truth (c. 1797 - 1883) was an abolitionist orator, famous for her speaking tours across the North in the 1850s in support of equal rights for emancipated persons, women’s rights, and desegregation. Her best-known speech was delivered extemporaneously, in 1851, at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. The speech became widely known during the Civil War by the title “Ain't I a Woman?” Truth worked for the Freedman’s Relief Association. In 2014, she was included in Smithsonian magazine's list of the “100 Most Significant Americans of All Time.”