Alysia Abbott is the author of the internationally award-winning memoir Fairyland, now a feature-length film, produced by Sofia Coppola, streaming on Amazon and Apple TV. Her commentary, essays and criticism have been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, NPR's Cognoscenti and elsewhere. Formerly the head of GrubStreet's Memoir Incubator program, she now teaches writing and literature at Emerson College and Mass Art. 

*photo by MacKenna Lewis

Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol (b. 1974, Istanbul) is a Grammy nominated Turkish-American composer, performer, and scholar based in Boston since 1993. His work spans contemporary concert music, jazz composition and improvisation, and Ottoman/Turkish music traditions alongside research and practice-based scholarship as well as instrument innovation. He is a full-time faculty member at the New England Conservatory, where he serves as Director of the Intercultural Institute. Featuring: James Heazlewood-Dale on bass and George Lernis on drums.

*photo by Suzi Sanlikol

Rick Moody is the author of six novels, including The Ice Storm, three collections of stories, and three works of non-fiction. He has written frequently about music at Salon, The Rumpus, and Salmagundi magazine, and he teaches at Tufts University. 

The Suitcase Junket Matt Lorenz is “a living, breathing, throat-singing, road-tested, avant-garde, one-man-band who is in a state of perpetual motion… gutsy, fuzzed-out, groove-laden psych rock.” (NPR) The spectacle of the show bears comparison to legends of showmanship, madness and invention. Lorenz writes a world into existence, crowded with characters, narratives, voices, imagery, sounds as varied as mountain throat singers and roadhouse juke boxes, and newsreels of the planet's destruction and salvage.

*photo is courtesy of the artist