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"When I was younger, I never really thought of living past twenty-five…I felt like I was in a movie. I thought that I was living this movie idea of things and there’d be gunshots around you. You hear it hitting the concrete, and you’re like ‘Oh, shit’. Seriously, I didn’t think of it as real life. When you’re young, the idea that I’d known people that were killed early, you go to prison. These just felt like matter of fact. They seemed to be this part of life and you just accepted them.”David Tomas Martinez is the author of two collections of poetry, Hustle and Post Traumatic Hood Disorder, both from Sarabande Books. Martinez is a Pushcart winner, CantoMundo fellow, a Breadloaf Stanley P. Young Fellow, NEA poetry fellow, and NEA Big Read author. Martinez lives in Brooklyn.· davidtomasmartinez.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

David Tomas Martinez is the author of two collections of poetry, Hustle and Post Traumatic Hood Disorder, both from Sarabande Books. Martinez is a Pushcart winner, CantoMundo fellow, a Breadloaf Stanley P. Young Fellow, NEA poetry fellow, and NEA Big Read author. Martinez lives in Brooklyn.· davidtomasmartinez.com · www.creativeprocess.info

“To not honor that we are all creative, beautiful, interesting deep, rich individuals. We’re not zeros and ones on a spreadsheet. We’re not scientifically explained. We are not mathematically judged. We are imperfect blobs of emotion and bone and spirit and life and when we come together there is nothing greater than the chemistry and the alchemy of musical theater… There’s a joy, there’s a bounce, there’s an effervescence that’s part of that music. I had a great teacher in college, the head of our program Brent Wagner said, 'With lyrics, I can tell you to open the door, but with music I can tell you how.’ Lyrics are information and music is emotion.”Most highly noted for his stunning work in musical theater, Gavin James Creel is a Tony & Olivier Award-winning actor, singer and songwriter. On Broadway, he’s performed in shows including Throughly Modern Millie, Hair, The Book of Mormon, Waitress and Hello, Dolly!, his performance in which won him his first Tony Award. Creel is also a LGBTQ+ activist, having done much to raise awareness and fight for marriage equality.· www.imdb.com/name/nm1342128· www.creativeprocess.info

Most highly noted for his stunning work in musical theater, Gavin James Creel is a Tony & Olivier Award-winning actor, singer and songwriter. On Broadway, he’s performed in shows including Throughly Modern Millie, Hair, The Book of Mormon, Waitress and Hello, Dolly!, his performance in which won him his first Tony Award. Creel is also a LGBTQ+ activist, having done much to raise awareness and fight for marriage equality.· www.gavincreel.com· www.creativeprocess.infoHELLO, DOLLY! Photo by Julieta Cervantes

“I always find it an ironic thing to think about the fact that Fred Rogers was colour-blind. He could barely tell a blue from a grey. I was young and to him I was a child and I certainly played the role of a child and he played the role of parent… He was profoundly patient.”Dr. François Clemmons is perhaps best known as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’s Officer Clemmons. He made history as the first African American actor to have a recurring role on a children’s television program. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin College, a MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and an honorary degree from Middlebury College. In 1973, he won a Grammy Award for a recording of Porgy and Bess; in 1986, he founded and directed the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble; and from 1997 until his retirement in 2013, Clemmons was the Alexander Twilight Artist in Residence and director of the Martin Luther King Spiritual Choir at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he currently resides.· https://francoisclemmons.net · www.creativeprocess.info

Dr. François Clemmons is perhaps best known as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’s Officer Clemmons. He made history as the first African American actor to have a recurring role on a children’s television program. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin College, a MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and an honorary degree from Middlebury College. In 1973, he won a Grammy Award for a recording of Porgy and Bess; in 1986, he founded and directed the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble; and from 1997 until his retirement in 2013, Clemmons was the Alexander Twilight Artist in Residence and director of the Martin Luther King Spiritual Choir at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he currently resides.· https://francoisclemmons.net · www.creativeprocess.info

Avi Loeb is a Professor of Science at Harvard University and a bestselling author with lists of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly and more. Loeb wrote 8 books and over 800 papers on a wide range of topics, including black holes, the first stars, the search for extraterrestrial life, and the future of the universe. He had been the longest serving Chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy (2011-2020), and Founding Director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative. In 2012, TIME magazine selected Loeb as one of the 25 most influential people in space.Website: lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/Essays in Scientific American: lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/Opinion.html· www.oneplanetpodcast.org· www.creativeprocess.infoPhoto: Lotem Loeb

Avi Loeb is a Professor of Science at Harvard University and a bestselling author with lists of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly and more. Loeb wrote 8 books and over 800 papers on a wide range of topics, including black holes, the first stars, the search for extraterrestrial life, and the future of the universe. He had been the longest serving Chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy (2011-2020), and Founding Director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative. In 2012, TIME magazine selected Loeb as one of the 25 most influential people in space.Website: lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/Essays in Scientific American: lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/Opinion.html· www.oneplanetpodcast.org· www.creativeprocess.infoPhoto: Lotem Loeb

“A lot of people in my family and among my friends when they heard that I study Yiddish and that later made it my livelihood, they are very surprised. Yiddish? How come Yiddish? Why Yiddish? They even laugh sometimes, they are very surprised. And what I answer to them is that there is nothing surprising about the fact that I study or speak Yiddish. The real surprise, the real question that has to be asked is how come my parents, this last generation, didn’t speak Yiddish? Because, if you consider my family, for hundreds of years on all sides they spoke Yiddish.”Tal Hever-Chybowski is the Director of the Paris Yiddish Center (Maison de la Culture Yiddish) & Medem Library. He is the Founder and Editor of the diasporic-Hebrew journal Mikan Ve’eylakh in Berlin, and Ph.D. candidate at the History Department of Humboldt University, Berlin. He holds a B.A. in History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an M.A. in History from the Humboldt University. He translated into Hebrew Edward Said’s Representations of the Intellectual (1993), Mikhal Dekel’s The Universal Jew: Masculinity, Modernity, and the Zionist Moment (2014), and is currently translating a forthcoming book on diaspora by Daniel Boyarin.· www.yiddishweb.com· www.creativeprocess.info

Tal Hever-Chybowski is the Director of the Paris Yiddish Center (Maison de la Culture Yiddish) & Medem Library. He is the Founder and Editor of the diasporic-Hebrew journal Mikan Ve’eylakh in Berlin, and Ph.D. candidate at the History Department of Humboldt University, Berlin. He holds a B.A. in History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an M.A. in History from the Humboldt University. He translated into Hebrew Edward Said’s Representations of the Intellectual (1993), Mikhal Dekel’s The Universal Jew: Masculinity, Modernity, and the Zionist Moment (2014), and is currently translating a forthcoming book on diaspora by Daniel Boyarin.· www.yiddishweb.com· www.creativeprocess.info