Writer and artist Stokley Towles grew up in Massachusetts, attended Brown University graduating with a BA in Semiotics. He studied photography at the Rhode Island School of Design, received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, and received a Master’s in Library and Information Science at the University of Washington.

For 25 years, he has immersed himself in overlooked urban communities—sewer workers, city bus drivers, garbage collectors—and interviewed the people he met along the way, bringing his insights to life with stories and images. Of his work, critic Brendan Kiley wrote, “While his colleagues use the tragedies of others as raw material—Spalding Gray on Cambodia’s grotesque wartime history, Mike Daisey railing about Scientology and iPhone factories in China—Towles manages the unusual feat of finding the transcendent within superficially boring stuff.” Another critic, Mark Douglas, wrote in Drama in the Hood, “Towles delves into things too common for most of us to take much notice, and by delving and researching and coming back to share what he discovers he becomes both a pioneer and a mirror.”

He has published in ZYZZYVA, Harness, and Raven Chronicles Journal. He has performed in theaters, bookstores and nightclubs in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. His work has been presented at the Henry Art Gallery, Greg Kucera Gallery, and Seattle Art Museum. Towles’ last project followed construction workers in Calgary, Alberta. He lives in Seattle.