Kresge Arts in Detroit and WDET have partnered to present a virtual artist salon series featuring the 2021 Kresge Artist Fellows and Gilda Awardees. This nine part series includes never before seen video presentations by awarded metro Detroit artists and writers followed by a public Q+A and conversation moderated by WDET’s Ryan Patrick Hooper.

Zig Zag Claybourne is the author of The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan and its sequel, Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the Universe. Other works include By All Our Violent Guides, Neon Lights, the short story collection Historical Inaccuracies, and the inspirational book In the Quiet Spaces. His stories and essays on sci fi, fandom, and life have appeared in Apex, Galaxy’s Edge, GigaNotosaurus, Strange Horizons, and other genre venues, as well as the 42 blog at writeonrighton.com. He grew up watching The Twilight Zone and considers himself a better person for it.

Solomon Johnson is a Detroit-born and raised artist. As a child, his mother wrote and illustrated several children’s stories while encouraging his artistic exploration. Years later, his professional career began as a product designer creating auto interiors for General Motors at Henry Dreyfuss & Associates and Lear Corporation. In 2015, his youngest daughter inspired him to write a children’s story. Ultimately, this led him to author a four-part series. Currently, Johnson’s time and energy are devoted to illustrating his first children’s book, Daddy, Where Do the Animals on the Train Go?

B. Van Randall is a writer and creator of unique graphic novels and comic books. He seeks to tell compelling and captivating stories of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and action that feature African American (and other people of color) and LGBTQ leads as opposed to telling simply “Black stories.” He founded Verse Comics USA in 2017 and his company has published eight titles to date (some of which are award-winning).