2025 Faculty

Designed for Educators

Kerry Warren, Instructor

New York, New York

Kerry Warren is a New York-based actor, theatre teaching artist, and former Co-Executive Director of the Teaching Artists Guild. A Juilliard graduate and recipient of the President Polisi Prize for Artist as Citizen, she has spent over a decade teaching with organizations such as Lincoln Center Education, People’s Theatre Project, and New York Theatre Workshop. Warren is a 2024 National Guild Next Generation Award recipient and a proud graduate of the Teaching Artist Project, TATI where she trained in arts education for students with disabilities, and Bartol’s Trauma-Informed Practice cohort. As an actor, she has performed on Broadway (The River), Off-Broadway (The Wash at Women’s Project), and regionally (The Originalist, Romeo and Juliet). She appears on NBC’s New Amsterdam and Audible’s Rapture Season with Lili Taylor. Warren is a proud member of AEA, SAG-AFTRA, and the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable.   

Website: kerrywarren.com
Instagram: @kerryawarren

WORKSHOP Fresh Tools for the 21st-Century Theatre Teaching-Artist

Writing

Richard Blanco, Instructor

Miami, Florida and Bethel, Maine

Selected by President Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history, Richard Blanco was the youngest, the first Latinx, immigrant, and gay person to serve in that role. In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden. Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami in a working-class family, Blanco’s negotiation of cultural identity and themes of place and belonging characterize his poetry, including his most recent collection, Homeland of My Body, as well as his memoirs For All Of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey and The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood. Blanco has received numerous awards and honorary degrees. He has served as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and the first-ever Poet Laureate of Miami-Dade County. Currently, he serves as Education Ambassador for The Academy of American Poets and is an Associate Professor at Florida International University.

Website: richard-blanco.com
Instagram: @poetrichardblanco
Facebook: @richardblancopoetry

WORKSHOP Photographic Poems

Sarah Weeks, Instructor

Jeffersonville, New York

Sarah Weeks has published more than sixty picture books and novels for young readers, including Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up Her Wash, Mac and Cheese, and Save Me a Seat, co-written with a former student, Gita Varadarajan. Her award-winning novel, So B. It, won the Rebecca Caudill Award and was made into a full-length feature film, starring Talitha Bateman and Alfre Woodard. In addition to writing, Weeks has visited thousands of children in schools and libraries across the country. She has also served as an adjunct professor at Columbia University Teacher's College and The New School in New York City. She and her husband, Jim Fyfe live on a dirt road at the top of a hill in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. 

Website: sarahweeks.com

WORKSHOP Nurturing Story: Writing for Young Readers

Visual Arts

Katherine Liontas-Warren, Instructor

Cache, Oklahoma

Katherine Liontas-Warren, Professor Emeritus of Art at Cameron University, has been a resident of Oklahoma since 1984, where she taught all levels of drawing, printmaking, and watercolor. Liontas-Warren was awarded the Oklahoma Governor’s Art and Education Award in Oklahoma City at the State Capitol in 2014. She is also the recipient of the Bhattacharya Research Excellence Award, the Cameron University Faculty Hall of Fame, the Phi Kappa Phi Distinguished Faculty Award, and received the title of the Artist of the Year by the Paseo Arts Association in Oklahoma City. Liontas-Warren has exhibited her works of art in over 400 national and juried competitive shows, solo, and invitational exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad. Many of her prints and drawings are in permanent collections and museums and institutions throughout the nation. She has conducted workshops at the John Campbell school and the Sierra Club. 1515 Lincoln Gallery in Oklahoma City represents Liontas-Warren's paintings. 

Website: katherineliontas.com
Facebook: Katherine Liontas-Warren: fine artist
Instagram: @okartistk.liontas

WORKSHOP Intuitive and Inspirational Watercolor Painting

Marwin Begaye, Instructor

Norman, Oklahoma

An internationally exhibited artist, Marwin Begaye, Navajo, was born in Ganado, AZ. Begaye is currently living in Norman, OK, where he is a professor of studio art at the University of Oklahoma School of Visual Arts. He examines the issues of cultural identity through the intersection of American Indian and popular cultures. His ongoing research investigates the technical processes related to printmaking and construction of mixed-media art. He received numerous awards as an Artist in Residence and through juried exhibitions. His work has been featured in numerous publications and maintains an active exhibition schedule, featured in exhibitions in New Zealand, England, Argentina, Paraguay, Italy, Siberia and Estonia. He work is displayed in private collections, museum collections, and the United States Library of Congress, Prints and Photograph Division.

Website: marwinbegaye.com
Instagram: @printmakingpapa

WORKSHOP For the Love of Birds and Patterns

Nicole Emmons, Instructor

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Nicole Emmons is a Citizen Potawatomi Nation filmmaker and mixed media artist based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. With an M.F.A. in Experimental Animation from the California Institute of the Arts, she specializes in stop motion animation and innovative storytelling. Emmons' work has been showcased in festivals worldwide, has been featured on platforms such as Netflix, Adult Swim, Nickelodeon, NBC, and the Discovery Channel, and she has collaborated with notable companies such as the Obama's Higher Ground Productions. Her latest project, "Black Wolf's Legacy," explored the forced removal of the Potawatomi people, merging history with contemporary art to foster dialogue about cultural identity and survival. That project was supported by the First People's Fund in addition to the Andy Warhol Foundation, in partnership with the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition. She is currently working with Factory Obscura on a series of videos for their Boombox art piece at their downtown location.

WORKSHOP Natural Animation

Shawn Sheehy, Instructor

Chicago, Illinois

Shawn Sheehy has been teaching book arts courses and workshops since 2001. His broadsides and artist book editions have been collected by such institutions as Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, University of Chicago, Library of Congress, UCLA, and Harvard. Sheehy’s trade pop-up books Welcome to the Neighborwood and Beyond the Sixth Extinction (both mass-market versions of previously developed artist books) were published by Candlewick and have won numerous awards. Sheehy served as director of The Movable Book Society from 2018 to 2023. He holds an M.F.A. in Book Arts from Columbia College Chicago.

Website: shawnsheehy.com
Instagram: @shawnwilder
YouTube: @shawnsheehy

WORKSHOP Animate Your Artist Book with Pop-Ups
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