2026 Chico Attendees Series

Writer and artist Donna Gordon joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to talk about her series that reimagines Eve in the Garden.

Donna Gordon is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based writer and artist. She graduated from Brown, was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, a PEN Discovery, and a Ploughshares Discovery. Her debut novel, What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me, Regal House 2022, received a starred review from Kirkus Review and was named among the 100 best Indie novels of 2023, having been described as, “A soulful journey that offers surprises and unforeseen victories.” The novel also received the 2022 Whirling Prose Prize from Etchings Press, and was the November pick for the Brown Book Club of Boston. It was named by the Independent Book Review as one of the top 45 they’re excited about for 2022. Nina McLaughlin wrote in a Boston Globe review: “Gordon’s prose is lively; it rushes along with verve, humor, and heart…[She has] achieved the rare thing, a stirring, poignant story of death and love and a page-turning adventure.” She received the 2018 New Letters Publication Award for her short story, “Primates,” and has published fiction, poetry, and essays nationally.

Gordon is also a visual artist, with a focus on photography and printmaking. She received the 2024 LensCulture Jurors’ Choice award for a portrait, and was finalist for portrait series. She received the 2024 and 2023 Julia Margaret Cameron Award, winner in portrait series and alternative process, and honorable mention for women seen by women and landscape series. Her work has been featured in both Shots Magazine and The Hand and has been shown in both solo and group shows at the Danforth Art Museum, Soho Photo Gallery, Fitchburg Art Museum, Cape Cod Museum, ArtsWorcester, Providence Art Gallery, Bromfield Gallery, Galatea Fine Art, Concord Art Association, George Marshall Store Gallery, Site:Brooklyn, Featherstone Gallery, Union of Maine Visual Artists, Attleboro Art Museum, and Cambridge Art Association. Her work with former political prisoners culminated in “Putting Faces on the Unimaginable: Portraits and Interviews with Former Prisoners of Conscience,” exhibited at Harvard’s Fogg Museum. She’s represented by Bromfield Gallery, Boston.

https://donnasgordon.com

https://www.instagram.com/donnagordon8994/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club

Begin Building your dream photobook library today at

https://charcoalbookclub.com

The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Chico Hot Springs Resort, near Livingston Montana. Applicants will spend the week with over twenty of the most influential and creative photographers, book makers, gallerists, museum curators, and photobook publishers in the industry.

https://chicoreview.com

https://www.charcoalworkshops.com

2026 Chico Attendees Series

Photographer Chris Muth joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to talk about his landscape work and processing the varying critiques he received.

My name is Chris Muth. I have been a photographer for over 12 years, exploring many different styles and disciplines within the medium, as you may be able to tell. I received my education in filmmaking, and have been photographing, originally, as a way to practice cinematography without a crew and equipment. It has now taken over my creative interest, really since I went to college.

For the past few years, I have focused on the land around me, trying to find something within it that I cannot find through other photographic work about the subject. I have been working on a project titled Everywhere You Have Ever Been for about 5 years now, and am going to complete it before this next spring. This project is concerned with exploring our connection to the natural world by exploring the hostility between us. This website will serve as a constantly evolving catalog of that project, as well as a showcase of my previous commercial and creative work.

Feel free to contact me for any freelance opportunities, I am open for business! I would love to assist on any projects, and help support a vision!

Contact: chrismuthvisuals@gmail.com

https://www.chrismuthphoto.com

https://www.instagram.com/sirhchtum/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club

Begin Building your dream photobook library today at

https://charcoalbookclub.com

The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Chico Hot Springs Resort, near Livingston Montana. Applicants will spend the week with over twenty of the most influential and creative photographers, book makers, gallerists, museum curators, and photobook publishers in the industry.

https://chicoreview.com

https://www.charcoalworkshops.com