Cara Hoffman is the author of three New York Times Editors’ Choice novels and is a Senior Editor at PM Press. Her most recent novel Running was an Esquire Magazine Best Book of the Year, and an Autostraddle Best Queer and Feminist Book of the Year. Her first novel So Much Pretty sparked a national dialogue on violence and retribution and was named Best Suspense Novel by the New York Times Book Review. Her novel Be Safe I Love You was nominated for a Folio Prize and named one of the Five Best Modern War Novels by the Telegraph UK. Hoffman’s essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times, The Paris Review, Bennington Review, Bookforum, BOMB, The Opiate, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Teen Vogue and on NPR. A MacDowell Fellow, and an Edward Albee Fellow. She has been a visiting writer at Columbia, St. John’s and Oxford University. Her collection of stories RUIN is forthcoming in April, 2022.
Marc Lepson is an artist, curator and professor, who has been part of the downtown art scene in New York City since the early 1990’s, beginning with his work as artist and Master Printer at the Lower East Side Printshop. He is represented by Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery where he curates the Fermata 3 X 3 Project. Lepson’s work first came to national attention as part of the activist group, ad hoc artists, staging public performances (Our Grief is not a Cry for War) in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in Lower Manhattan. In the decades that followed, his strident political prints and evocative installations have been showcased at The Brooklyn Museum and exhibited internationally in Vienna, Berlin, Stockholm, and Reykjavic. Lepson’s studio practice is based in research, collaborative exchange of ideas, and detailed attention to craft; he works in intimate formats and large scale installations. Using photography, printmaking, painting, and drawing he isolates gestures that speak about brutality and beauty. A Pollock-Krasner Grant recipient, his work has appeared in Art on Paper and Art in America. He serves on the faculty of Parsons School of Design in New York City, where he teaches drawing, book arts, and digital imaging.
Panagiotis Kechagias is a writer, editor, and translator based in Athens, Greece. His first book, the short story collection Final Warning (Antipodes, 2016), received glowing reviews and was shortlisted for every major literary prize that year in Greece. His fiction and essays appear regularly, in print and online, both in major daily newspapers and literary journals. His translations include: Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God, Greg Jackson’s Prodigals, Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow, Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, Joshua Cohen’s Moving Kings, Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones, as well as a new critical translation of E.A. Poe’s “The Gold-Bug”. In the past, he has been a resident at Art Omi, Hudson, NY (2015), Sangam House, Bangalore, India (2017), and the Chennai Mathematical Institute, India (2020).
Chef Paco Rodriguez, having just completed a three-year culinary residency on an organic farm in coastal Connecticut, USA has returned to his status as ‘professional roamer’ and our dedicated residency chef. For over a decade, Chef Paco has spun together healthy, hearty meals for yoga and wellness gatherings throughout a network of boutique retreat centers throughout New England. His eclectic approach to menu planning has been described as energizing and is fueled by his love of eating his way through Southeast Asia, Italy and Southern Africa. Chef Paco looks forward to interpreting the vast repertoire of Greek culinary traditions at The Athens Workshop.