Sarah M. Broom | Literature | 2012 & 2013 Alumni
Sarah M. Broom is a trained journalist and author. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Oxford American, and elsewhere. At Djerassi in 2012, Broom conceptualized her first book, The Yellow House. The book went on to win a 2019 National Book Award in nonfiction. She lives between New Orleans and New York with her partner, filmmaker, Dee Rees.
She received her undergraduate degree in anthropology and mass communications from the University of North Texas before earning a Master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley. She began her writing career as a newspaper journalist working in Rhode Island, New Orleans, and Hong Kong (for TIME Asia). She served as an editor at O, The Oprah Magazine for several years. In the years following, she worked extensively in the nonprofit world, including as executive director of the global nonprofit, Village Health Works, which has offices in Burundi and New York.
Ruth Charlotte Kneass | Visual Arts | The Jones Institute
“I am an Oakland based, Bay Area born sculptor and designer. I am the daughter of a long line of San Francisco based wood boat builders on my father’s side and a multi media artist mother. I grew up in my mother’s workshop and at my father‘s SF boat yard. I am curious about all art forms and have focused for the last 20 years carving wood and stone. In addition to my carving, I enjoy working with metal, ceramics, painting, printing, paper, and textiles.
My greatest inspiration comes from nature and the classic geometry therein. I have spent the last 10 years debuting my work in Japan. I enjoy waking up each and every day inspired, seeking ways to share and express myself through my art and designs.”
Briana Marela Lizárraga | Composer | ArtBae
Briana Marela Lizárraga is a Peruvian American composer, vocalist, and performing artist based out of Oakland, CA. Inspired by Magical Realism and using her voice as a focal point, she makes use of visually engaging elements of tech augmented gestures and objects to compose and perform her music live. Lizárraga’s gestural and lyrical song performances draw from elements of both experimental electronic music and vocal driven pop music. Using a visual programming language, sensors, and microprocessors, she is able to make custom tools to create compositions with varying fixed elements that transition into moments of improvisation. She is currently a Montalvo Lucas Arts Music and Composition Fellow. She was a spatial sound artist in residence for six months at Audium in San Francisco for their residency New Voices IV, performing her multi-channel piece live every weekend from February to April 2025. She received an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College in 2020. Her newest full length album, My Inner Rest, was released on June 6th, 2025 via AKP Recordings.
Jeremy Mende | Visual Arts | 2015 Alumni
Jeremy Mende is an interdisciplinary artist based in San Francisco. His work choreographs encounters between the human body and the natural world. Drawing on a background in psychology (UCLA) and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, he creates site-specific installations, earthworks, and spatial experiences that use light, landscape, time, and movement to produce states of awe—re-sensitizing visitors to the ecological and temporal realities we inhabit. His most recent project, for the time being, is a permanent earthwork at the Djerassi Foundation in Woodside, CA. Mende’s work has been exhibited internationally and is held in the permanent collection of SFMOMA. A Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, he is a professor at California College of the Arts, where he teaches the design of experience and experimental methods.
Arturo Mendez | Visual Arts | COVEN x ARTS.CO.LAB
Arturo Méndez is a cultural producer, curator, visual artist, musician, and community organizer, advancing cultural equity in SF. Founder of community empowering projects, including Arts.Co.Lab, La Diáspora Festival, and Urban Prophets Illustrated and producer for the Mission Arts and Performance Project (MAPP) since 2016.
He has curated shows for the Exploratorium SF, Harvard and Cornell University, and the United Nations. He has received the California Catalyst Grant, the Cultural Equity Initiatives Grant by the SFAC. He is a fellow with the National Arts Policy Alliance ‘25, the Greater Bay Area Arts Coalition ‘24/’25), the Advocacy Leadership Intitute ‘23-’21, the Intercultural Leadership Institute ‘22, and the Emerging Arts Professionals SF/BA ‘19.
His work strives to create generative narratives to empower people through arts and culture for collective joy and liberation and to advocate for institutional policies and practices that center the voices of people from the most vulnerable communities.
“Culture is an essential tool to pursue dignity for all people.”
Charlene Tan | Visual Arts | re.riddle
Charlene Tan studied History and Theory of Contemporary Art, with a specialization in New Genres, at the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been exhibited at the Blaffer Museum, Houston, Asia Society, TX, Buffalo Institute of Contemporary Art, Triton Museum of Art, Museum of Craft and Design, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. She has been awarded national residencies at MASS MoCA, Children’s Creativity Museum, San Francisco. Born in Houston, TX, the artist lives and works in San Francisco, CA.
Tatsiana Zamirovskaya | Literature | 2023 Alumni
Tatsiana Zamirovskaya is a Belarusian-born writer who moved to Brooklyn, New York, in 2015 after working as a journalist and music critic in Belarusian independent media. She holds an MFA from Bard College and is a recipient of MacDowell, Djerassi, and VCCA residency fellowships.
Tatsiana is the author of three short story collections in Russian and a bestselling novel about digital resurrection, memory and digital dictatorships, The Deadnet (2021), which was shortlisted for several Russophone literary awards. Her book of memoir essays on emigration, war, music, and displacement, Eurydice, Check If You Turned Off the Gas, was published in 2024 by a Belarusian independent publisher in exile in Warsaw, Poland, receiving critical acclaim. A feature sci-fi film, Exactly What It Seems, for which Tatsiana co-authored the script, based on her short story of the same name, is set to be filmed by Belarusian/American director Darya Zhuk in Poland in 2026. Tatsiana is currently working on the final editing of her first book in English, a collection of translated short stories, Can I Speak With a Real Person? under contract for 2028 publication.