Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts is a writer whose work has appeared in Transition, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe. She has received awards from the Independent Press Association, the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the Lannan Foundation. Originally from Houston, Texas, she graduated in 2000 from Harvard University and was a Fulbright Scholar in the United Kingdom. Sharifa is writing a trilogy on African-Americans and utopia; her first book, Harlem is Nowhere, will be published in 2011 by Little, Brown & Company.

While at A Studio in the Woods, Sharifa will be researching and writing the story of the 1811 insurrection in which enslaved Africans attempted to fight for their freedom, inspired by the recent success of the Haitian Revolution. She is also interested book arts and plans to print the story on paper she makes using refuse fiber from the three main cash crops of Louisiana’s plantation economy: cotton rag, bagasse from sugar cane and rice straw.

Changing Landscapes are 6-week residencies based on the premise that Southern Louisiana can be seen as a microcosm of the global environment, manifesting both the challenges and possibilities inherent in human interaction with the natural world. We ask artists to describe in detail how the region will affect their work, to propose a public component to their residency and to suggest ways in which they will engage with the local community. Four accomplished artists have been selected to participate in this year’s program, funded in part by the Ford Foundation, the Louisiana Division of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. The artists in this round of residencies are Tory Tepp of Los Angeles (September-October 2009), David Sullivan of New Orleans (November-December 2009), Karen Rich Beall of Lebanon, PA (January-February 2010), and Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts of New York (February-April 2010).