Born in Leicestershire, UK, Amy Hughes spent her years growing up between Cheshire, UK and Moscow, Russia. In July 2013 she received a degree in BA Hons Fine Art from Liverpool Hope University, UK. At her undergraduate show, she was awarded the 'purchase prize' by the Liverpool Women's Hospital, where a painting can be found in private collection.

In 2016, she graduated from a two-year full-time MFA program at the New York Academy of Art. During her studies, she was awarded an Academy Merit Scholarship and HRH The Prince of Wales Scholarship (MFA 2016). Since graduating, Amy has continued to exhibit her work in both solo and group shows, working as an instructor of painting and as an Artist in Residence in the UK and New York. Most notably she has sold work at Sotheby's Auction House NY and has exhibited in the International Biennale Portrait Competition at Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work has been featured in several publications, including W Magazine, Southwest Art, Aesthetica Magazine, Cheshire Life, The Liverpool Echo and more.

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amyvhughes.com

https://www.instagram.com/amyvhughes.artist/

Ana Moioli (Founding Artistic Director; actor) is a Brazilian actress and playwright in New York. Ana started acting at nine and later went to Russia, at the Moscow Art Theatre School. She is currently completing her BFA in Drama at NYU Tisch. Favorite theater credits include 'Harper Regan' (dir. Nina Fry), 'The Seagull' (dir. Vera Kharybina), 'A Streetcar Named Desire' (dir. Pedro Granato) and 'Birds of a Feather' (dir. Lauren Grajewski) – for the latter, she got a Best Actress nomination at Between Us Productions’ Take Ten Play Festival. She's also starred in short films, such as 'Elsewhere' (dir. Guilherme Pedra), for which she received the Best Actress Award at the American Student Film Festival, as well as 'How to Water Roses' (dir. Mirella Cardoso) and 'Julieta' (dir. Vicente Gonzalez). She recently debuted as a filmmaker with the film Bridge. www.anamoioli.com

Barbara Kahn is a playwright, director and actor with annual productions of her plays at Theater for the New City in New York City. She coaches actors and playwrights and offers fundraising for the arts seminars.

www.barbara-kahn.com

Reared in the South Carolina Lowcountry, Dale Novella is a singer/songwriter, poet and educator who performs and produces events in the New York City area.  A captivating performer, Novella has graced various stages in both the US and Europe including The Bitter End, The Bowery Poetry Club, and is a regular at SoFar Sounds.  Novella uses her love of music to educate youth in social justice and life skills.  

Novella began The REC Life (Royaltie Entertainment Company) in 2011 to produce and promote music that inspires and uplifts.  The REC's flagship event is "The Poet WILL Be Televised" at Harlem’s Silvana, a poetry jam session that fuses Dale's loves, soul music and gut wrenching poetry.  You can find more information about The Poet WILL Be Televised! by visiting The REC Life’s website, www.thereclife.org.  Keep up with Dale Novella by following her on Instagram, Facebook and at her website www.dalenovella.com.

Elena was born and raised in Italy where she obtained a formal degree in child psychology.
​There she was part of an independent theater company based in Venice. She then moved to NY 4 years ago and since where she attended the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Insitute for the two years conservatory program and performed as Gus in Harold's Pinter "Dumb Waiter" , an all women production of the play.
Since then she's been working in films ,theater and commercials.

Two years ago she opened LIGHTOFFILM NYC production company with her partner Marco Vitale and  is now involved in documentary, directing and producing.

Her last work "The Future Is Female" is an award winning short doumentary about female empowerment.
She is currently working on another documentary called "Ciano" wich is in postporduction and is schedule to be realesed in 2019.

Emily Cordes is an NYC-based actress, arts marketer/fundraiser, and theatre journalist. In art and life, she seeks to create work that connects, provokes, and transcends. Originally from Pittsburgh, PA, Emily is a graduate of Smith College and Columbia University. As a performer, she has appeared in various theatre, film, and web productions throughout the tri-state area, and co-created work with such devised theatre groups as Tapestry Collective and The Laboratory of Soul, most recently receiving a Rising Sun Performance Company residency for her devised play "So Sad, So Sexy" about the fetishization of mentally ill women. She has held administrative roles with such performing arts organizations as The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, The Neo-Political Cowgirls, and The Bushwick Starr. Emily is a staff writer for the blog Theatre Is Easy, and has also written articles for Howlround, CultureBot, and The Theatre Times. http://tinyurl.com/emilyscordes.

Giorgia Valenti (Founding Artistic Director;actor) expresses her passion for storytelling through acting, dancing, choreographing, singing and modeling. Giorgia is a senior in the Drama program at Tisch School of the Arts and has trained at the Meisner Studio, in Commedia dell’arte, at the Experimental Theatre Wing and is now at the Lee Strasberg Institution. She is also pursuing a minor in Dance where she is exploring diverse dance forms. Her artistic practice is inspired by free movement, the complex relationship between home and identity and the use of art as a therapeutic practice. She has a great passion for the history of Realism and Naturalism in European theatre. She is still energized from her run of Fiction with 600 Highwaymen as well as starting her own theater company Et Alia! As an international woman, Giorgia has worked and performed in India and Italy as well. @giorgiavalenti98

Heidi Russell is a self-taught fine art photographer since the age of six. She is a graduate of Cornell University with a BS in Business Administration. In 2004, Ms. Russell left her career in Fundraising to make her passions of photography and the Arts, international cultural exchange, and connecting people is a part of her daily life and purpose. Ms. Russell’s work has been in solo and group exhibitions internationally, and she has participated in several artist programs and residencies throughout Europe. Ms. Russell is also an independent curator and publisher. She is founder and director of the cross-disciplinary International Women Artists’ Salon.

Ingrid Pierson is excited to be working with IWAS! Credits include: Theater at Monmouth, Out of the Box Theatre Company, Mill Mountain Theatre, Metropolitan Playhouse, Theatreworks USA, Weathervane Repertory Theatre, Seven Angels Theatre, Roxy Regional Theatre, Surflight Theatre, Allenberry Playhouse, Triad Stage, North Carolina Theatre. Education: UNC-Greensboro.

Irene Turri is a Brooklyn based writer, actress and producer. After growing up on stage in Italy, in 2012 she moved to the big apple. Since then, she has written and produced the play "Neighbors (An Anti-Romantic Comedy)" with Francesco Meola, performing in Italy and New York; she has collaborated with several theatre companies performing at the Access Theatre, Theatre For The New City, the Secret Theatre and The Kraine and she has collaborated with InScena! Italian Theatre Festival and IWAS as a live and radio producer and host.This year she produced her first short movie "Homenaje A Mi Alma", a neo-noir love story directed by the visionary Dan de Jesus. www.ireneturri.com

Jenny followed her dreams to New York City in 2006 to take her place at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (like RADA, but AADA). She graduated in 2008, after being awarded the Dina Merrell Scholarship for international students. She cut her teeth in a range of off Broadway shows & short films, most notabley with Storm Theatre, American Thymele Theatre, The Stupes and St Jeans Players. For the past two years she has been engaged as an Actor & Producing Artist by Manhattan Theatre Source in Greenwich Village, where she produced and appeared in numerous short play festivals and initiated the role of Joannie in Billy Carver and the Children in Mind, a show which she also produced, designed and workshopped.

Maggie is based in Bristol, UK, she is an artist, illustrator, hand letterer and graphic designer.

She graduated with a BA hons in Graphic Design and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Maggie works on an eclectic mix of projects in the UK and the US. She works with design studios and private clients, startups and established businesses. 

Her work has been shown in various galleries in New York as well as in the UK and Holland. Her work is held in private collections in New York, UK, Italy, Holland and Australia.

http://www.maggiecousins.com

info@maggiecousins.com

Malini Singh McDonald is a venn diagram of the theatre industry. She is a native New Yorker with a BA in English Literature and Theatre Arts and an MFA in Directing from The Actors Studio Drama School. She also completed the  CTI Producers Intensive. Malini founded Theatre Beyond Broadway as a platform to promote and foster the independent artist. TBB represents a broad range of artists through producing, publicity, education and a podcast. The TBB podcast guests include Tom Viertel (6 Time Tony Award Winning Broadway Producer), Melissa Robinette (VP of Actors Equity), Daniel Gallant (Executive Director of the Nuyorican Poets Café), Jocelyn Bioh (School Girls; or The African Mean Girls Play, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night). Select credits include the revival of Godspell (Producer, Broadway Revival), The Year of Living Dangerously (Publicist, 54 Below), Whiskey Pants: The Mayor of Williamsburg (Publicist, HERE Arts Center), From Ship to Shape (Publicist, Winner of Two United Solo Awards), The Eternal Space (Associate Producer & Marketing Director, Theatre Row). Malini is on the board of the League of Professional Theatre Women, a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, the Associate Producer for the Broadway Artist Connection, producing partner for The Anthropologists and panelist for the Broadway Bound Theatre Festival. When she isn’t doing all things theatre, she is also an executive assistant in the legal industry. ​

Marcina Zaccaria is a writer, director, and arts administrator.  She has directed readings and plays in venues that include New Dramatists, TheaterLab, HERE Arts Center, Dixon Place, Soho Rep, Dance Theater Workshop, and the Ohio Theater.  She curated a Salon at Dixon Place.  This one day event featured visual artists, spoken word artists, dancers, filmmakers, and theater artists.
 
She is a member of the League of Professional Theatre Women, and is a reader for the New York Musical Theatre Festival.  Arts administration experience includes providing support for the Executive Director/ Contemporary Programming at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc.  She has worked in ticket sales at the Roundabout Theatre Company and Manhattan Theater Club.
 
She has written monologues, published in InterJACtions:  Monologues from the Heart of Human Nature (Vol. II), available on Amazon.  She is published in the New Crit section of Howl Round, and her clips can be found on Twitter.  She has an MFA from Columbia University.

Maria-Luiza Müller (Founding Artistic Director; actor) is a Romanian artist based in New York. She recently graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a major in Drama and a minor in Dance. She is interested in making art that tells important stories and she is eager to create plays, films, dance pieces etc. that give voice to womxn and international people. Her most recent projects include the feature film Queen Marie of Romania directed by Alexis Cahill Sweet, the short film Skip Tantrum directed by Daniel Nemroff and the TV series Love in NY directed by Matthew Russell. She also wrote an autobiographical film called Where Are You From Again that she will act in and that is currently in pre-production. If you are interested in finding out more about her, her website is www.marialuizamuller.com 

Maureen Van Trease - actress, voiceover artist, playwright and singer, SAG-AFTRA, AEA. Frequently involved in hosting and presenting for IWAS Salon Radio for the last 3 years as well as working to make Salon events happen in whatever capacity she can. She holds a BA in Theater from Hardin-Simmons University, and a Post Grad diploma in Musical Theater from Mountview Conservatoire in London. She acted in professional theater in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Georgia as well as the Tampa Bay area for 10 years before moving to New York in 2002. Favorites Those Whistling Lads: The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker (writer, actress, producer), “8:46” (actress - Cannes Marche du Filme) and “Leitmotif (aka Three Steps to Paradise)” (actress).

Rahi is a Bangladeshi (immigrated and grew up in NYC) activist and digital media artist based in Durham, NC. Rahi’s multimedia art functions as a continuous experiment with form, relationships, theory, and identity. It spans autobiography, collaborative social documentary, experimental video, installation, reflective/theoretical discourse, and text-based approaches. She is the recipient of 2018 Lewis Hine Documentary fellowship from Duke University.  Follow her work at www.mmjdocumentaries.com

The multimedia art of Rahima Rahi functions as a continuous experiment with form, relationships, theory, and identity. Her work spans autobiography, collaborative social documentary, experimental video, installation, reflective/theoretical discourse, and text-based approaches. In her work, Rahi experiments with ways to effectively shift the power she holds as a filmmaker over to the community, while still offering participants the value of her creative and technical support. For Rahi, “the process is the reason for creation” of her autobiographical and biographical experimental art. When practiced in a state of heightened vulnerability, the rituals of production ignite the possibility of healing, liberation, and the reclamation of power.

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Website: www.mmjdocumentaries.com 

Email:info@mmjdocumentaries.com

Manga graphic novel, social practice public artist

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Born and raised in Tokyo, Japan and currently live in NYC. Using pop, colorful, fun and playful expression, she challenges viewers to rethink their pre-existing social values and customs such as gender, age and race, and to feel more empathy towards different elements in the society. 

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Manga: Rica’tte Kanji, Tokyo Love, published in 2003, and 2012 in English ver, 2011in Italian ver.

Public art project: Aliens in NY, One Stop Family Pop Up, StopGap.

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http://aliensnewyork.wixsite.com/mysite

https://1stopfamily.blogspot.com

Born in Iaşi Romania (1976), Sabina Păuţa Pieslak is a visual artist whose work spans varied media, including paper sculpture, painting, and mixed media. A unifying thread in her style comes from her love of nature and explorations of vibrant colors and textures. Sabina was exposed at an early age to the artistic world of then-communist Romania. When she was eight years old, her father was chosen to represent Romania on a music tour of the US, meeting the leaders of America’s musical world, and then report back to Romanian authorities. However, he decided to defect and seek political asylum in the US. After two years, Sabina, her mother, and sister were able to join her father in the US. Those early years in Romania, however, instilled in Sabina the artistic spark that would continue to inspire her.

Sabina spent her teen years in New Jersey, where she was formally trained in painting by Evelyn Leavens and Jack Miller. Also a gifted pianist, she was offered numerous scholarships to conservatories and pursued academic study in music, earning a Ph. D. from the University of Michigan. After moving to New York City in 2003, she continued to study painting at the Art Students League of New York with Dale Myers and Timothy Clark, and served as a curatorial intern at the Museum of Arts and Design. Her works have been purchased by private collectors in the US and Romania, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City, and exhibited by galleries throughout the US and internationally. For more information please see www.sabinapieslak.com.

Sarah Moore is an editor for a fashion trend forecasting firm and a freelance writer living in New York City. Sarah studied at Washington University in St. Louis, where she received a Bachelor's Degree in English and Spanish. She worked on the editorial boards for several university publications that covered topics in fiction, poetry, and fine art. After interning at The Vital Voice newspaper, a bi-weekly GLBT publication covering the St. Louis metro area, she worked as a staff writer and later as Associate Nightlife Editor until moving to Manhattan.Sarah's interests include Italian and Japanese cuisine, fine art, publishing, and social justice issues concerning women's health and rights. She is an avid reader of feminist writing, short stories, children's books, and, of course, fashion magazines/blogs.

WEBSITES/WORK:

Suite101: http://www.suite101.com/profile.cfm/sarahmoore

Personal: http://sarahbmoore.com/

Queens College, NY City, undergraduate classes in art followed by years of classes in museums. An assistant with artists organizing their shows. In the New School studied photography. Former District Leader (Hon.) in Manhattan, past elected non paid elected official for 20 nonconsecutive years, past President of National Women's Political Caucus of New York County, former Executive Director/Director of non profits,served on Boards of Director, fundraiser and program development for women organizations. In the NGO/Working Group on Girls Chair of Committee Girls against Violence and with the NGO/Committee on Mining Group a Co-Cevener of Subcommittee Gender Impact. Member of Soroptimist International, NGO/Committee of Status of Women, and the Women's City Club. Serve on health and disability task forces as an advocate and then testify before elected officials. For over 20 nonconsecutive years a judicial or alternate judicial delegate to the New York State Supreme Court Convention for NY County. 

sandy.womenartsalon@gmail.com

Teresa Lotz writes music and words. Her work includes Red Emma & the Mad Monk (music, Ars Nova Ant Fest 2017), A Surrealist Sort of View (music, Prospect Theater Company’s WORLD VIEWS), Mommy’s Little Princess (Reading, New Perspectives Theatre Company's [NPTC] Women's Work May Mini-Festival 2017), ThreeTimesFast (book and music, Pallas Theater Table Read Series Winner 2017, The Script at Stage 74, New York Film Academy, Winter New Works Series 2016), The Awakening (music, Reading, Musical Theatre Factory Developmental Series, Playwright’s Horizons), She Calls Me Firefly (Workshop, Parity Productions, NYC, 2017, VHTD Foundation/NPTC 2015 & Cherry Lane Theatre TONGUES reading series 2014). She is the former Director of Operations with Parity Productions and is a co-founder of LezCab. Teresa is a member of Dramatist’s Guild, ASCAP, and the League of Professional Theatre Women. Musical Theatre Writing, M.F.A. New York University. TeresaLotz.com

Yasmine Lancaster was born in east harlem raised in the Bronx and claimed the world as her oyster even if she's veganish. A graduate of Purchase College with a minor in African American studies and music. She has begun writing as a child and went to HS Graphic Communication arts where she studied Creative Writing. She received award with the NAACP Act-So competition in both essay and poetry. However she truly began to write with vigor after embracing SGI Nichiren Buddhism. Four years ago she was apart of a Sidewalk Walk Sister a cheorpoem which combines music and dance to tell the story of being a young woman living working and falling in love in NYC. It sold out for all 3 performance. She has featured at Soul Revenue and Open Mic Moments. Published poet in Free Verse Magazine and Bronx Times. Her most recent essay has been published with Nia Magazine.com  in January 0f 2018. In November she performed with Open Moments  at the Andrew Freeman House in the Bronx. Open Moments is an  Italian based theater that focuses on social justice issue and combines music and dance. She is grateful for  the writing group that she is apart of Women's Writer's in Bloom her family her friends - The support of African Voices, Mama Hawk's Speakeasy and all of her friends and families. 

Yunzhi Pan is a young photographer and poet from Beijing, China. Her aspires to use photography to reveal beauty that transcends what the eyes can see. Her poems have been published by Minetta Review and read at Bowery Poetry Club, East Village Arts Festival, and Dixon Place. She studies at New York University and is interning for International Women Artists' Salon and Grey Art Gallery. She contributed to building this site.