A Visual Meditation on Natural Gestures

Willy Conley is an award-winning, published photographer and writer who received a B.S. degree in Biomedical Photographic Communication from Rochester Institute of Technology. Later, he received an M.A. degree in Creative Writing/Playwriting from Boston University under Nobel laureate, Derek Walcott. He also received an MFA degree in Interdisciplinary/Intercultural Theatre from Towson University. He is the author of the books Photographic Memories: Selected Essays, Playlets, and Stories, Plays of Our Own – An Anthology of Scripts by Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Writers, Visual-Gestural Communication: A Workbook in Nonverbal Expression and Reception, The World of White Water – Poems, Listening Through the Bone – Collected Poems, The Deaf Heart – A Novel, Vignettes of the Deaf Character and Other Plays, and Broken Spokes – A Play in Seven Scenes. Born profoundly deaf, Conley is a retired professor emeritus and chairperson of Theatre Arts at Gallaudet University (the world’s only liberal arts university for deaf and hard-of-hearing students) in Washington, D.C. His first film, A Visual Meditation in Natural Gestures, won Best Experimental prize at the 2022 Seattle Deaf Film Festival and Best Short Short at the 2023 Milwaukee Illuminate Film Festival.