My Dinner with Andre ( err Joh Yau !)

We are pleased to announce an exceptional opportunity to work one-on-one with John Yau through our Independent Study Program.

Over the past three years, we have been fortunate to work with John as core faculty within Symposia!, each time shaping a program that is distinct, responsive, and alive to the moment.

This latest offering provides participants with three one-hour meetings with John Yau. These sessions are designed as open, generous conversations centered on the development of your work, but free to move wherever curiosity leads—visual art, poetry, storytelling, lived experience—always circling back to inspiration, depth, and sustained creative practice.

The title of this Independent Study Program takes inspiration from My Dinner with Andre (1981), the American comedy-drama directed by Louis Malle and starring André Gregory and Wallace Shawn as fictionalized versions of themselves in conversation at Café des Artistes in Manhattan. The film unfolds as a wide-ranging dialogue touching on experimental theater, art, spirituality, and the nature of everyday life—an exchange that mirrors the spirit of this program.  Think of this as having dinner with John: informal, brilliant, irreverent, and deeply supportive. A creative conversation where your work is the root and heartbeat of the evening.

Participants will be organized into small pods of approximately three artists (final structure to be confirmed), with each member presenting once per session. Michael David the founder and director of YCS will join these dinners, along with occasional visits from past mentors and guests such as Astrid Dick, Judy Pfaff, and David Reed—dropping by for dinner from time to time.

Admission to this program is by submission and review. Pods will be thoughtfully curated to ensure a shared level of commitment, curiosity, and chemistry, supporting both the rigor and enjoyment of this experience.

This Independent Study Program will culminate in an exhibition curated by John Yau.

Poet, art critic, and curator John Yau has published more than fifty books of poetry, fiction, and art criticism. Born in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1950 to Chinese immigrant parents, Yau attended Bard College and earned his MFA from Brooklyn College in 1978. Since the publication of his first book of poetry, Crossing Canal Street (1976), he has been widely recognized for work that is deeply attentive to visual culture and the material surface of language. His writing frequently plays with puns, tropes, and linguistic slippage, and is anchored in the complexities of his dual heritages as a Chinese American poet and artist. Across both poetry and prose, his work continually explores—and exploits—the porous boundaries between forms.

In addition to his poetry, Yau has written extensively on contemporary art and has produced numerous artists’ books. He served as Arts Editor of The Brooklyn Rail until 2011 and has since contributed regularly to Hyperallergic. He has taught at institutions including Pratt Institute, the Maryland Institute College of Art, the School of Visual Arts, Brown University, and the University of California, Berkeley. His honors include fellowships and awards from the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others. He was also named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. In 1999, he founded Black Square Editions, a small press devoted to poetry, fiction, translation, and criticism.