We are incredibly pleased to announce that Kaya Press will be partnering with the amazing Denniston Hill arts organization to be offering one month-long residency to a deserving artist/writer each summer starting this August. Situated on a 200-acre campus in the Southern Catskills, Denniston-Hill was established on the conviction that it is imperative for artists of all disciplines, backgrounds and career stages to have time and space for reflection and research. We are excited to kick off this partnership this year, and grow the program in future years and use it to help develop writers and literary visionaries whose work and ideas intersects with that of Kaya Press.

This year, we are very very excited to announce that the inaugural Kaya Press-Denniston Hill resident will be the amazing Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik.

Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik is conceptual artist working with craft and food to tell the stories of migration. She is also a writer, educator, and cook with the People’s Kitchen Collective. Her work focuses on decolonization, the hierarchy of the senses, and immigration. Raised in Los Angeles and based in Oakland, she is Indian and Japanese Colombian American. Sita holds a B.A. in Studio Art from Scripps College, an M.F.A. in interdisciplinary art and an M.A. in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts. Sita has exhibited, collaborated, and cooked in the US, Holland, Ireland, Hong Kong, and Mexico. These institutions include: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, The San Jose Museum of Art, The Oakland Museum of California, Southern Exposure, 826 Valencia, Stanford University, The Smithsonian APAC, the Future Food House in Rotterdam and MaD Asia. Committed to equity and diversity in the arts, Sita has been the art features editor for Hyphen magazine, and a board member at Kearny Street Workshop. She has been a Lucas Artist Program Resident at Montalvo and an artist in residence at Shankill Castle in Kilkenny, Ireland. Sita is a founding member of the People’s Kitchen Collective in Oakland, California along with Jocelyn Jackson and Saqib Keval. They were named on 2016’s YBCA 100 and cook in parks, youth centers, and museums. Together, they produce community meals that narrate our shared struggle and resilience. The goal of The People’s Kitchen is to not only fill our stomachs but also nourish our souls, feed our minds and fuel a movement. She currently teaches “A Taste of Resistance” in Diversity Studies at California College of the Arts.

We’ll be able to announce more about a future Kaya Press project with Sita shortly, so stay tuned and congratulations to Sita. We are very excited to work together! And big thanks to Denniston Hill for this partnership and we look forward to growing it over the next few years.