Coming of Age in a Disorienting World: Animated films curated by MacDowell Fellow Yao Xiao

In close partnership with Metrograph, MacDowell presents two weekends of animated films handpicked by Yao Xiao (24). Xiao writes of her selections: "The animated films that I’ve chosen for this series span cyberpunk fantasies through to nonfiction storytelling from the 1960s through to 2023, yet they’re united by shared themes of nostalgia, memory, and most importantly, coming of age."

Yao Xiao is a writer and illustrator based in New York City. She is a MacDowell Fellow, and the author of graphic novel Everything Is Beautiful, And I’m Not Afraid, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Her illustrations and writing have been published in The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, TIME, Catapult, Lit Hub, and Autostraddle. Yao Xiao currently teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City where she lives and creates.

Metrograph is the ultimate destination for movie lovers. A special curated world of cinema inspired by the great New York movie theaters of the 1920s and the Commissaries of the Hollywood Studio backlots, Metrograph is a community inhabited by movie professionals screening their work, taking meetings, watching films, collaborating together — an audience built around our shared love of cinema.