Session 1: Jaromir Stoll

www.jaromirstoll.com

Jeremy Stoll (they/them) is a comics creator, folklorist, and Associate Professor of Science & Social Science at Columbus College of Art & Design. Stoll’s scholarship on comics culture in India and internationally has appeared in The International Journal of Comic Art; Marg, A Magazine of the Arts; Cultures of Comics Work; The Routledge Companion to Comics; and the acclaimed, co-edited volume – with Benjamin Woo – The Comics World: Comic Books, Graphic Novels, & Their Publics. In their creative practice, they are committed to visual storytelling on the ineffable in life. Recent work includes autobiographical contributions to comics anthologies (Rainbow Reflections: Body Image Comics for Queer Men), an illustrated zine on India-based cartoonists (Sketches of India’s Comics Worlds for TL;DR Zine Archive), self-published comics poetry on grief (Someone Left), and a short comic on queer readings of pop culture (in Futures of Cartoons Past: The Cultural Politics of X-men: The Animated Series). Their current project – Hike in the Heartwood: Walking through Grief - examines the history of hiking and nature preservation in North America, with a focus on the overlap between ecological and personal loss in a climate chaotic world.

Session 2: Rowan Haber

www.rowanhaber.com

Rowan Haber is an aesthetically-minded Writer/Director who works in both narrative and documentary. A graduate of NYU’s Tisch, they were a Sundance Momentum Fellow, New Frontier Lab  and Art of Practice fellow. They were selected for Universal Pictures’ Directing Lab, AFI’s Directing Workshop, Film Independent’s Episodic Lab, and Outfest’s Screenwriting Lab. They were featured on The Alice Initiative’s list of directors ready to helm studio films and Indiewire’s 8 Best Trans Directors, and have been a fellow at Yaddo, MacDowell and UCross Artist Residencies.

They won a Webby, New Orleans Film Festival, and LA Film Festival award for their series, New Deep South. Their series Braddock, PA (Topic) gained critical attention from The New York Times and The New Yorker.

They directed the finale of the FX x Killer Films series Pride and are directing the documentary We Are Pat, EPed by Lilly Wachowski, Impact Partners and Lauren Greenfield. Their film Shell.ai is being produced by Seaview (Slave Play). They are attached to direct the adaptation of Brontez Purnell’s novel Since I Laid My Burden Down (2021 SFFILM Rainin Grant). They were  an advisor for Sundance’s first Trans Possibilities Lab and continue to work with their trans community in their art practice. 

Session 3: Austin McAllister

www.fromoften.com

“Born under the guide of a bright star,” Austin McAllister is a songwriter, producer, and performer under the moniker Often spinning beauty from their past into music that sounds as if Tracy Chapman and Fiona Apple grew up in the same church. Their music has been featured on Netflix, Showtime, and CBS, with the addition of their directorial work appearing on NPR and included in the 41st edition of OutFest’s OutMuseum, “the first LGBTQ+ arts and media museum of its kind.” Currently in practice in Los Angeles, Often is milling through the loss of the village and hoping to rediscover its meaning in contemporary times.

Session 4: Isabel Ball

www.instagram.com/izza.wizza

Isabel Ball, originally from the Chicagoland area, currently lives in Portland, Maine. She graduated from the Chicago Academy for the Arts (2014) before completing her BFA in Contemporary Dance Performance along with a Psychology minor at the Boston Conservatory (2020). She worked closely as a dancer and collaborator with Vancouver based dance collective, Addo Platform, in Canada and Portugal. She then joined little house dance, a Portland based contemporary dance company under the direction of Heather Stewart, as a company member in 2020. Isabel has developed her own teaching and choreographic practice, working with studios and programs across Maine while performing work of her own. She continues to develop her interests in performance, film/photography, writing, and collaborative work.