Persimmon Creek Residents, 2021 - 2024
Arrow Rock, MO
Byron Smith
June 2024
Byron Smith (1960-2024) was born in Columbia, Missouri. He attended the University of Missouri – Columbia, where he pursued drawing, painting and printmaking within the Fine Arts Department. From 1992 to 1996, he co-owned Columbia’s Mythmaker Gallery. He was a longtime member of the Orr Street Artist Guild, where he occupied a studio.
As a painter, Smith worked in oil, watercolor and casein. He was also a skilled printmaker, proficient in etching, lithography and serigraphy. He was best known for his landscapes of the Missouri River Valley. Smith also studied anatomical drawing and enjoyed working from the human figure when not in the landscape. Additionally, inspired by his interest in local and regional Missouri history, Smith collected works on paper and prints.
Smith’s paintings appear in multiple collections, among them the State Historical Society of Missouri in Columbia; The Museum of Art and Archeology at the University of Missouri; the Boone County History & Culture Center; the Ashby-Hodge Gallery of American Art at Central Methodist University; the Daniel Boone Regional Library in Columbia; and numerous private collections.
Works by and about Byron Smith
“Byron Smith's peace and kindness lived in his art and relationships,” a remembrance in the Columbia Missourian
“Artist Byron Smith's paintings showcased the best of Missouri,” a remembrance in the Columbia Daily Tribune
“Columbia painter Byron Smith Selected for program focused on Arrow Rock’s Black history,” Columbia Daily Tribune
“Byron Smith: Meet the Artist and His Legacy Landscapes,” a profile in Missouri Life
Byron Smith Paints the Center for Missouri Studies, a short film from the State Historical Society of Missouri
Brian Palmer
June 2024
Brian Palmer lives in Virginia, where for ten years his focus — as an image maker, journalist, citizen, and descendant of enslaved people — has been illuminating what his collaborator and wife, Erin Hollaway Palmer, calls “the afterlife of Jim Crow.” Brian and Erin see this legacy of systemic racism and privilege in the continued funding of Confederate monuments and sites across the South and in the persistent neglect and underfunding of African American sites of memory. Since the end of 2014, Brian and Erin have been part of the volunteer effort to reclaim East End Cemetery, a historic African American burial ground in Henrico County, Virginia.
Palmer’s work — writing, photography, audio, and video — has appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, The Nation, Smithsonian Magazine and The Virginia Quarterly Review, and on Buzzfeed, PBS, the BBC, and Reveal. Before going freelance in 2002, he served in a number of staff positions — Beijing bureau chief for US News & World Report; staff writer at Fortune; and on-air correspondent at CNN. He began his career in the late 1980s as a fact-checker for the Village Voice.
With colleagues Seth Wessler and Esther Kaplan, Palmer received the Peabody Award, National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Award, and Online Journalism Award for “Monumental Lies,” a 2018 Reveal radio story about public funding for Confederate sites. He is a founding member of the Friends of East End Cemetery, an organization devoted to the reclamation of a historic African American burial ground under threat from multiple forces. He’s also among the founders of the Descendants Council of relatives of African Americans laid to rest in segregated burial grounds in greater Richmond and concerned citizens from the broader Black community. In 2008, he received a Ford Foundation Knowledge, Creativity, and Freedom grant to complete a television-length documentary about his three trips to Iraq to document the actions of a US Marine combat unit, 1st Battalion/2d Regiment.
Palmer is a member of the board of directors of the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City, where he earned his MFA in 1990. He serves as SVA’s representative to Writing with Light (wwlight.org), an initiative he started with theorist Fred Ritchin in 2022 in response to the incursion of generative artificial intelligence into the realm of nonfiction or straight photography. From August 2021 to June 2023, he served as the Joan Konner Visiting Professor of Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Palmer’s photographs are in the collections of the Library of Congress, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and private citizens, and they have been exhibited at Richmond’s 1708 Gallery, the University of Richmond Museums, the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Adelphi University, Haverford College, Washington University in St. Louis and others.
Works by and about Brian Palmer
Historic African-American Cemeteries, an original photo series on Brian Palmer’s website
Monumental Disruptions, an original photo series
Descendant Voices at East End and Evergreen Cemeteries, a short documentary
“The Costs of the Confederacy,” an article written with Seth Freed Wessler for Smithsonian Magazine
“Monumental Lies,” the Peabody Award-winning radio story created with Seth Wessler and Esther Kaplan for Reveal
“For the Forgotten African-American Dead,” an opinion piece and photo essay for the New York Times
Race Trips, a seven-part investigative series written with partner Erin Holloway Palmer for Colorline
David Todd Lawrence
May-June 2023
David Todd Lawrence is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in the Department of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. He teaches African American literature and Expressive Culture, Folklore studies and Cultural Studies. His writing has appeared in Journal of American Folklore, Journal of Folklore Research, Open Rivers and The New Territory. His book, When They Blew the Levee: Race, Politics and Community In Pinhook, Missouri (2018, co-authored with Elaine Lawless) is an ethnographic project done in collaboration with residents of the African American town destroyed in the Mississippi River Flood of 2011. The book won the Chicago Folklore Prize in 2019.
With colleagues Heather Shirey and Paul Lorah, Lawrence co-directs the Urban Art Mapping Project, started in 2018. The Urban Art Mapping team created and oversees the George Floyd & Anti-Racist Street Art Database, a crowd-sourced, community archive of images of street art created as part of the movement for racial justice following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The group was awarded an NEA grant to support the study of Black Lives Matter street murals created in towns and cities across the country during the summer of 2020. The team focused on studying murals in eight cities, including Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Chicago.
Lawrence has strong roots in Missouri, where he attended high school, college, and graduate school. Both his parents were born in the state, and his father’s family is from the historical Black hamlet of Pennytown. Located just six miles south of Marshall, Missouri — and about fifteen minutes from Arrow Rock- — and founded in 1871, Pennytown was once a thriving village of Black farmers and laborers. Most of its residents left by the late 1940s, seeking better work in larger places, like Marshall and Kansas City. Only the Pennytown Freewill Baptist Church remains on the spot where Pennytown was located. Recently, Todd has turned his thinking and writing toward the history and the present of his ancestral home of Pennytown, its decedents, and issues of land ownership and reclamation in Black life.
Work by and about David Todd Lawrence
When They Blew the Levee: Race, Politics and Community in Pinhook, Missouri, written with Elaine J. Lawless and available from the University Press of Mississippi
Taking Pinhook, a short documentary
The George Floyd and Anti-Racist Street Art Archive, a database by the Urban Art Mapping group
“Environmental and Racial Injustice,” an interview with the Currents of Folklore podcast
“The Soul to See, the Courage to Fail: Ethnography, Relationships and Social Change,” a colloquium talk via SoundLore
The Drip, a literary podcast featuring academics of color discussing great books
In the Belly of the Beast, a podcast about cultural and literary studies, theology, social theory and politics
Karla FC Holloway
May 2023
Karla FC Holloway is James B. Duke Emerita Professor of English and African American Studies and Professor of Law at Duke University. During her professional career, her classrooms and scholarship focused on literature, law, and bioethics. Since becoming emerita, Holloway has turned her full attention to writing fiction, occasional painting (anything with the color cerulean), and tweeting from @ProfHolloway.
In 2019, TriQuarterly published Holloway’s debut work of literary fiction, A Death in Harlem, set during the Harlem Renaissance. A second novel, Gone Missing in Harlem, followed in 2021 and received a Publisher’s Weekly Starred Review. Holloway is now at work on the third book in the series, A Library in Harlem, which she continued in Arrow Rock. Holloway lives and works in Wake Forest, North Carolina, and never — well, rarely — uses the telephone.
Academic and nonfiction work by Karla FC Holloway includes Legal Fictions. Constituting Law, Composing Literature (2014); Private Bodies / Public Texts: Race, Gender, and a Cultural Bioethics (2011); BookMarks: Reading in Black & White (2006); Passed On: African American Mourning Stories: A Memorial (2002); Codes of Conduct: Race, Ethics, and the Color of Our Character (1995); Moorings & Metaphors (1994); New Dimensions of Spirituality (1989); and The Character of the Word (1987).
Works by and about Karla FC Holloway
Gone Missing in Harlem, available via Bookshop.org
A Death in Harlem, available at Bookshop.org
Legal Fictions. Constituting Law, Composing Literature, available via Bookshop.org
“Shield the Children,” an essay in the New Jersey Star-Ledger
“A Name for a Parent Whose Child Has Died,” an article at Duke Today
“Giving a Name to the Pain of Losing a Child,” an audio piece for NPR
“DNA and Genealogy: A Worrisome Mix,” an audio piece for NPR
“New Orleans’ Cities of the Dead,” an audio piece for NPR
Hermine Pinson
June 2022
Hermine Pinson has published three poetry collections: Ashe, a chapbook; Mama Yetta and Other Poems; and Dolores is Blue/ Dolorez is Blues. Her first CD, Changing the Changes in Poetry & Song, was produced in special collaboration with Yusef Komunyakaa and Estella Conwill Majozo. Her second CD, Deliver Yourself, is a collaboration with Harris Simon and the Harris Simon Trio.
Pinson’s poetry, fiction and critical essays have appeared in anthologies and journals, such as Callaloo, Verse, Cave Canem Poetry Anthology, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, African American Review, Common Bonds: Stories by and About Modern Texas Women, Eyeball, Konch, Melus, Paintbrush, and Forum for European Contributions in African American Studies. Recent short fiction has appeared in the anthologies Richmond Noir and The Evil One; and her most recent critical work includes a memoir essay on Mound Bayou, Mississippi; an ekphrastic poem on the work of artist Odile Donald Odita for the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond, Virginia; and two commissioned poems for the Dance Suite, Nine, by Frances and Edwin L. Cummings Professor of Dance Leah Glenn.
Pinson has held fellowships at Macdowell Colony, Yaddo, Soul Mountain, Byrdcliffe Colony, Vermont Studio Center, Norton Island, The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and Cave Canem. As Frances and Edwin L. Cummings Professor of English, she teaches Creative Writing and African American Literature at the College of William and Mary.
Works by and about Hermine Pinson
“Pinson to examine her blues sensibility in Tack Faculty Lecture,” an article in William & Mary News
Dolores is Blue / Dolorez is Blues, available on Amazon.com
Mamma Yetta and Other Poems, available on Amazon.com
Deliver Yourself, recorded with the Harris Simon Trio, at AllMusic.com
Changing the Changes in Poetry & Song, produced with Yusef Komunyakaa and Estella Conwill Majozo, at AllMusic.com
“Prelude to Ashe,” a poem at De Gruyter Bell
“Don’t Shake Me Lucifer,” collected in The Evil One, from Makeout Creek Books
“The Devil’s Half Acre,” collected in Richmond Noir, from Akashic Books
Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin
May 2022
Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin is a renowned contemporary fabric artist, fabric designer, author, lecturer and independent curator. Sonié has conducted workshops and lectures on African American quilting, and she has been invited to exhibit her extraordinary textile artwork at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the White House Rotunda, the David C. Driskell Art Center, the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Bethesda Medical Center, the Spencer Museum, the Leedy Voulkos Art Center, the Holter Museum of Art, Miami Basel, the Kansas City Museum, the New England Quilt Museum, the Mulvane Museum, KCAI Crossroads Gallery, the Portfolio Gallery, the Epstein Art Gallery, the Carter / Kemper Art Center, the UMKC African American Culture House, Bates College, Harvard University, Iowa State University, Lincoln University, Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, the Kansas City Leon Mercer Jordan East Patrol and Crime Lab Campus, and a host of quilt guilds, galleries, and museums in the United States, Africa and Europe. Her artwork is held in museum, gallery, corporate and private collections in the United States, Africa and Europe.
Sonié is a Charlotte Street Visual Arts Fellow, Art Omi Fellow, Storyteller’s Inc. Visual Arts Fellow, Kansas Governor’s Choice Artist, Kansas Master’s Artist, Alliance of Artists Community Scholarship recipient, Arts KC Inspiration Grant recipient and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. Women of Courage Award recipient. She is a two-year finalist of the Women to Watch, National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.
Sonié is the author of The Soulful Art of African American Quilts and Opening Day: 14 Quilts Celebrating the Life and Times of Negro Leagues Baseball. She is the designer of fabric collections Drums of Afrika, Jumping the Broom and My African Village. Her artwork has appeared in KC Art Studio, the Kansas City Star, the Washington Post and New Letters Magazine.
Sonié presently serves as member of the Kansas City Museum Foundation board. She is a founding member of the African American Artists Collective and the former curator of the American Jazz Museum’s Changing Gallery, located in Kansas City’s historic 18th & Vine Jazz District.
Works by and about Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin
Selected work of Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin at Bridge Projects
Selected work of Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin at the Spencer Museum of Art
“Gallery Glance: Joy is Resistance, Kansas City Museum,” an article at KC Studio
“Fabric Artist Sara Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin Answers Four Questions,” an article at IN Kansas City
“Art Scene: Sara Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin,” an article at the Independent
“The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Acquires Powerful Quilt by Sara Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin,” an article at KC Studio
Opening Day: 14 Quilts Celebrating the Life and Times of Negro League Baseball, available via Amazon.com
The Soulful Art of African American Quilts: Nineteen Bold, Improvisational Projects, available via Amazon.com
X.C. Atkins
July 2021
X.C. Atkins is the author of Grace Street Alley and Other Stories, published with Makeout Creek Books, and The Desperado Days, published with Trnsfr Books. He has short stories in Prairie Schooner, Paper Darts, Maudlin House, BULL, Akashic Books’ Richmond Noir, Coal Hill Review and other journals and anthologies. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University. He lives and writes in Los Angeles.
Works by and about X.C. Atkins
The Desperado Days, available from Trnsfr Books
Grace Street Alley & Other Stories, available from Makeout Creek Books
“Sunflower,” a short story in Maudlin House
“On Finding Your Audience, Writing About the Service Industry, and Short Story Collection Desperado Days,” an interview in Write or Die Magazine
“First Day on the Ground for Floyd," a nonfiction piece for Medium
“Baby Boy,” a short story in BULL
“Where Pop Grew Up,” a short story in Coal Hill Review
“Gattaca,” a short story in The Ice Colony
Glenn North
June 2021
Glenn North is currently the Director of Inclusive Learning & Creative Impact and Poet-in-Residence at the Museum of Kansas City. He received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and is the author of City of Song, a collection of poems inspired by Kansas City’s rich jazz tradition and the triumphs and tragedies of the African American experience. He is a Cave Canem fellow, a Callaloo creative writing fellow, and a recipient of the Charlotte Street Generative Performing Artist Award. His work has appeared in the Langston Hughes Review, Caper Literary Journal, Platte Valley Review, New Letters, KC Studio, Cave Canem Anthology XII, The African American Review, and American Studies Journal. Glenn’s ekphrastic and visual poems have appeared in art exhibitions at the American Jazz Museum, the Leedy-Volkos Art Center, the Bunker Center for the Arts, the Portfolio Gallery (St. Louis), the Greenlease Gallery, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. He collaborated with legendary jazz musician Bobby Watson on the critically acclaimed recording project Check Cashing Day, and he recently hosted the podcast A Frame of Mind for the Nelson-Atkins.
Works by and about Glenn North
City of Song, available at Bookshop.org
Check Cashing Day, available via Apple Music
A Frame of Mind, Glenn’s five-episode podcast with the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
The Gospel According to Glenn North, a short documentary by Harold Smith
“Black Cultural Institutions as Spaces for Community Healing,” a TEDx Talk
“Saying More with Less,” an episode of The Moth in which Glenn describes founding the Verbal Attack series
“Kansas City Museum’s Glenn North, Director of Inclusive Learning & Creative Impact,” an interview at Northeast News
“Glenn North: Truth-Teller,” a profile at KC Studio