PLAYA ALUMNI

Corrine Teed is a research-based artist working in printmaking, installation, time-based media, and social practice. Their work lives at the intersections of queer theory, ecology, critical animal studies, and settler colonial studies. Much of their creative practice...

Maria Rebolleda-Gomez is a microbial ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Irvin. She is originally from Mexico City and did her undergraduate degree in Biology at UNAM (the National University in Mexico) and her PhD at the University...

Katharine Spilker is a visual artist native to Washington State, currently living in Bellingham on Coastal Salish and Nooksack tribal land. They received a double degree in English Literature and Painting & Drawing from the University of Washington in 2016....

Dawn Roe (b. 1971, Sault Ste. Marie, MI) works with still photographs and digital video in both singular and combined forms. Her projects examine the role of these media in shaping personal and social understandings of our environment through site-responsive...

As a nature illustrator, environmental educator, and author, Zebith Thalden aims to inspire a deep engagement with the natural world, rich celebration of the unknown, ecological stewardship, and a connection through shared wonderment. Her creative practice is devoted...

Katy Didden is a poet who is interested in the relationship between text and image, the history of the elegy, and creative writing and the environment. Her first book, The Glacier’s Wake, won the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize from Pleiades Press, and was published in...

Rachel Shteir is the award-winning author of three books and many articles. Her books are cultural histories and biographies and her journalism has appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Rachel N. Levin is a biologist who studies the behavior of free-living animals in their natural habitats. She is specifically interested in animal communication and reproductive strategies. For over 20 years, first as a graduate student at Cornell University, later as...

Katie Miller was born and raised in the wilderness of Northeastern Minnesota, but is now deeply rooted in the Pacific Northwest. Her interdisciplinary practice is informed by her fascination with the temporality of our built and natural environments and how our...

“KatMeow” García is a bilingual Media Educator and Television and Film Director, and current Manager of Community Media Advocacy at Open Signal, Portland Community Media Center. They work with instructors and volunteers to support media education curriculum that...

Rebeca Alamo Gonzalez is a content designer. As a multi-passionate creative her con-conformity fuels everything she does to facilitate easier, vulnerable conversations across multiple mediums for people and planet.  She writes, designs, curates, and proofreads for...

For over 20 years Adam Kuby has been creating sculptures, temporary site-determined installations and permanent public artworks that have been integrated into wild areas, urban sites, streetscapes, parks, and other parts of our built environment. He has been an...

Amy Whitcomb creates fine art, functional art, and opportunities for herself and others to observe, reflect, discover, and build community through the written word. She was raised in New England and now lives in Northern California. For years, she worked in natural...

Satoko Motouji was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan. Her artistic experience started at age eighteen when she began to study drawing and painting from a professional artist in Kyoto. She moved to the United states to study Art History at the University of Oregon but...

Gayle Erbe-Hamlin was born in South Dakota to a GI farmer and a Dutch war bride. She moved to California in 1952. Even though she had traveled all over the world, she has always considered herself a Westerner at heart having also lived in Washington and now Oregon....

Emma Marris is an environmental writer and author. She's written for many magazines and newspapers, including National Geographic, Wired, the New York Times, Nature and the Atlantic. In 2021, she published her second book, Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the...

Jason Box is a physical climatologist and climate activist. As part of professional appointments at universities and for the state of Denmark, he has studied Arctic and global climate for 28 years. During this work, he has made 30 expeditions to Greenland to install...

Anna Vodicka's writing has appeared in AFAR, Brevity, Electric Literature, Guernica, Harvard Review, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Ms., Paste, and Best Women’s Travel Writing. She's received grant support from Artist Trust, 4Culture, and the Barbara Deming Memorial...

 Alice Towey writes speculative fiction and poetry, and her short stories have appeared in Asimov's, Fireside, and Deep Magic. She attended the Viable Paradise writing workshop in 2018. She's a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Outside of...

Maura Pellettieri a writer and artist. Her writing can be found in The Kenyon Review, Conjunctions, The Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Tupelo Quarterly, Fairy Tale Review, The Adroit Journal, Guernica, and others. She has given talks at the Cleveland Institute of...

Daniela Naomi Molnar is an artist and poet working with the mediums of language, image, and place. She is also a wilderness guide, educator, and eternal student. She works across forms, melding painting, poetry, prose, site-specific intervention, editing, and...

Melissa Walter is a San Diego abstract, mixed media artist. Her practice has been rooted in observation, research, and translation. Conceptually she often gravitates towards topics concerning astrophysics as a response to her experience as a science illustrator....

After an itinerant Navy brat childhood, moving every two or three years, and a whole bunch of youngish adulthood in graduate school (in Pittsburgh and Nebraska), Liz finds herself apparently settled in New Hampshire, where she has lived for twenty years. A lot of her...

Erica Berry is an Oregon-born teacher and writer with essays in publications such as Outside, The Guardian, The Yale Review, The New York Times Magazine, and others. Her work has been supported by the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Tin...