Join us to meet and learn more about Self as Universe: Mending Our Collective Ecosystem residents, Niamh Rita & Justice Singleton and Issy Manley as they give us a glimpse into the work they’ll be doing during their residency followed by a light dinner and refreshments on Tuesday, December 3rd, 6:30pm – 9:00-pm.

During their residency at Studio in the Woods, Niamh Rita & Justice Singleton will design and facilitate an experimental writers’ room tailored for a diverse group of transgender storytellers and artists from their local New Orleans community. In this writing room, they have chosen to focus on writing a screenplay because film is one of the most far-reaching mediums for sharing stories in today’s world. Producing a screenplay will lay the foundation for a future film production that will create artistic opportunities in our community. This collaborative writing project will provide a container and platform for participants to create stories that address the wounds in our collective ecosystems, promote healing of those wounds, and imagine the future we want to live in.

Niamh Rita (they/them) is a transmasc interdisciplinary artist and amateur folklorist living in New Orleans. Using the mediums of protest art, comics, collective creative projects and tattoo art, they work to build community and facilitate healing transformation through their art practice. Justice Singleton (he/him) is a black transmasculine educator, screenwriter, director, actor, poet, stand-up comedian and drag burlesque artist who lives in New Orleans. Justice facilitates a writer’s program that enlists creators to build community, inspires radical education and dismantles systemic storytelling.

Issy’s residency project is an illustrated, age-appropriate guide on the climate and ecological seasonal changes of sub-tropical Southeast Louisiana for preschool through early elementary-aged children. The final product might take shape as a 12-page picture book, open-ended field workbook, poster, fold-out/ pop-up zine, or a comic that would be printed and distributed for free to local educators/ programs to share with their students (as well as being offered free digitally to a wider audience). As an educator Issy has found few to no resources on our local climate and seasons for young children, and feels that it is important that children get to learn about the climate, weather and how eco-systems are shaped by both in the places that they live.

Issy Manley (she/her) is a cartoonist and educator living in New Orleans. Issy makes non-fiction comics about labor, climate crisis and capitalism. Her essay comics have been published in The Guardian, The Nib Magazine, The Washington Post and Narratively, among others. Her collection of non-fiction comics about work and unemployment during the pandemic – “No One Wants to Work Anymore” – was published by Antenna Press in 2023. She is the winner of Antenna’s 2021 Open Call, a MICE mini-grant, and was shortlisted for the 2022 Cartoonist Studio Prize. Issy has exhibited at Shortrun, CAKE and MICE comics festivals, and holds an MFA from The Center for Cartoon Studies.