Julie Akeret is an Emmy-award-winning documentary filmmaker. For the past thirty years, she has worked in various capacities of the film industry as a sound editor, camera operator, director and producer. Her films focus on education, the arts, and rights issues. Her first film, Not Just Garbage, a film about Mierle Ukeles, artist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation, premiered at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and won Best Documentary Short in the USA film Festival in 1986. Julie received a fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and grants from foundations such as the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, The Sister Fund and the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts among others. In 2012, Julie received a Boston/New England Emmy for Theatre on the Edge, a film exploring the collaborative process at Double Edge, a laboratory theatre based on a farm in Western Massachusetts. Big Ideas for Little Kids: Teaching Philosophy through Picture Books, released in 2015, also received a Boston/New England Emmy and was acquired by APT for national distribution. Julie Akeret's films are distributed nationally to educational institutions through Women Make Movies, Filmmakers Library and Bullfrog Films.
Christian McEwen is a writer, educator, and cultural activist. Since leaving New York City twenty years ago, she has edited two anthologies, and produced a video documentary Tomboys!, and a play, Legal Tender: Women & the Secret Life of Money. Her book, World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down (2011) is now in its sixth printing, and is also available in an audio format. Her most recent collection, Sparks from the Anvil: The Smith College Poetry Interviews, appeared in spring 2015. Christian grew up in the Borders of Scotland, and now lives in western Massachusetts.
