Mitzi Sinnott

Mitzi Sinnott is a daughter of two performing artists and considers herself half Appalachian and half New Yorker. Her unique family saga “Snapshot: a true story of love interrupted by invasion,” has been featured repeatedly on PBS nationwide, and on stage in South Africa, Scotland, Sweden, Brooklyn, and campuses across America. Snapshot is the true-life quest of a mixed-race daughter from Central Appalachia who eventually finds her Vietnam veteran father suffering in Hawaii. Named in the “Top 5 Best Diversity Speakers in America,” by Campus Activities Magazine, Sinnott uses art to spark conversations about the legacy of race, class and violence in America. Currently her company All Here Together Productions utilizes her expertise to convene conversations about race and class in order to build more tolerant communities, to learn from the past, to re-imagine our future, one story at a time. In 2020-2021, the Covid pandemic forced Sinnott to focus on the internet for her work. She updated all her equipment and is working with a professional designer to ceate a website. The Association of College presented a video showing her work at a Zoom conference. She gave the keynote performance for the Artist Thrive virtual conference. Moving to Ohio, she linked up with Wellesley Library near Boston presenting workshop sessions for Artists For Social Justice. Sinnott recently helped design the Kentucky Arts Center’s 3-part series “Your Anti Racism Plan” for Directors of Art organizations. This is her life’s purpose: creating community from strangers.

This bio/description was originally published in 2020 and updated in 2021. For more current information, please refer to the award recipient's website (if provided).