Helen DeWitt is a novelist based in Berlin. She is the author of The Last Samurai (Hyperion, 2000) and Lightning Rods (New Directions, 2012). Last year, she mounted the installation The Library of Helen DeWitt at Artists Space in New York, as part of the exhibition “The Library Vaccine.”
Hari Nef is a New York–based actress and model. Her writing has appeared in such publications as Dazed, Original Plumbing, and Adult. In May, Nef was signed to IMG Models, and she will appear in season two of the Amazon series Transparent, which premieres December 4.
Vienna-based artist Anna-Sophie Berger studied fashion design and transdisciplinary art at the city’s University of Applied Arts. She has mounted solo exhibitions at JTT and Ludlow 38 in New York; 21er Haus, 21er Raum, and Mauve in Vienna; and, most recently, White Flag Projects in Saint Louis.
Suzanne Ciani is a California-based composer, recording artist, and pioneer in the field of electronic music and sound design. Since 1982 she has produced seventeen albums, for which she has received five Grammy nominations, for Best New Age Album, and a Golden Globe award; in 1995 she founded the record label Seventh Wave. A Life in Waves, a documentary about Ciani’s life and work by filmmakers Brett Whitcomb and Bradford Thomason, is currently in production.
London-based artist and writer Cally Spooner has recently staged solo presentations and performances at such venues as the Bielefelder Kunstverein in Germany, the High Line in New York, and Tate Modern in London. The author of the novella Collapsing in Parts (2013), Spooner is the recipient of a 2013 Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists. Her multichannel film installation And You Were Wonderful, On Stage, commissioned by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, New York, will premiere in 2016.
Lena Henke is an artist based in Frankfurt and New York and the cofounder of M/L Artspace. She has recently mounted solo exhibitions at White Flag Projects in Saint Louis, Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten in Marl, Germany, and Real Fine Arts in New York. Her work is currently on view in New York in the New Museum’s triennial “Surround Audience” and at Off Vendome.
Dash Shaw is a cartoonist and animator whose graphic novel New School was published in 2013 to wide acclaim. His other publications include Doctors (2014), BodyWorld (2010), and Bottomless Belly Button (2008); among his recent animations are Wheel of Fortune (2012), Blind Date 4 (2011), the Sigur Rós video and Sundance Film Festival selection Seraph (cowritten with John Cameron Mitchell, 2012), and the IFC series The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. (2009). He is currently a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library.
Cosmin Costinas is the executive director and curator of Para Site, Hong Kong. He previously served as curator at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht, the Netherlands; cocurator (with Ekaterina Degot and David Riff) of the First Ural Industrial Biennial (2010); and as an editor of the Documenta 12 magazines project. He was on the curatorial team, led by Anselm Franke, of the Tenth Shanghai Biennale, which is on view through March 31 (see page 109).
The resident choreographer and a soloist dancer with the New York City Ballet, Justin Peck has performed principal roles in such productions as George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, 1941, and Firebird, 1949; Jerome Robbins’s West Side Story Suite, 1995; and Benjamin Millepied’s Plainspoken, 2010. As a choreographer, he has received commissions from numerous institutions, including the School of American Ballet and the New World Symphony. He is currently at work on a new interpretation of Aaron Copland’s Rodeo, 1942, for the New York City Ballet, which will premiere at the David H. Koch Theater
Brooks Headley has been the executive pastry chef of Del Posto in New York since March 2008. During that time he has helped the restaurant earn four stars in the New York Times, and in 2013 he was honored with the James Beard Foundation Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef. Headley has also been playing drums for more than twenty years, in a series of underground bands (Born Against, Universal Order of Armageddon, Young Pioneers, Skull Kontrol, Wrangler Brutes, Oldest, C.R.A.S.H., Music Blues). W. W. Norton has just released his first cookbook, Fancy Desserts, which features photography and design
Jessie Stead is a New York–based artist working in installation, cinema, music, collaboration, and other overlapping disciplines. She is the experimental percussionist in the art band #hariboner, currently recording their debut LP.
Liz Craft is a sculptor who lives and works in Los Angeles, where she co-runs the gallery Paradise Garage. This summer, her work was on view at Zurich’s Hacienda gallery (in a show with Lisa Anne Auerbach) and in Paris with Pentti Monkkonen at Pro Choice/Shanaynay gallery. Her work can be seen this fall in “Golden State,” a group show curated by Drew Heitzler at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson.