Biographies of 2003 Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship Award Winners in Dance Choreography/Performance Art, Literary Arts, and Music Composition
Carol Ceniti, Modern Dance
Milwaukee
Carol Ceniti lives and works in Madison, and is deeply engaged with the Madison dance community. Currently the Director of the Madison Professional Dance Center, and the Artistic Director (and one of the teachers) of Jazzworks Dance Company, she also choreographs and teaches free lance. Ms. Ceniti graduated in 1982 with a BS in Physical Education and Dance from the UW-Madison, having studied ballet, modern, and jazz dance in the UW Dance Department. Her post-graduate education in dance includes working with various trainers in jazz, ballet, modern, and various other dance forms; and working with many professional choreographers over the years. She has received numerous awards over the past 15 years, the most recent of which was a New Choreography grant for Jazzworks from the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission. In 1997, she received her first dance choreography fellowship from the Wisconsin Arts Board.Shauna Singh Baldwin, Fiction
Milwaukee
Shauna Singh Baldwin was born in Montreal and grew up in India. She is the author of English Lessons and Other Stories and the coauthor of A Foreign Visitor’s Survival Guide to America. Several magazines have published her fiction, articles and poems: The Writer, Calyx, Rosebud, hum, India Currents, and Cream City Review in the U.S.A.; Saturday Night, Books in Canada, Prairie Fire, Canadian Forum, Fireweed, and McGill St. Magazine in Canada; and Manushi magazine in India. CBC Radio broadcast stories from English Lessons on its drive-time shows. Shauna holds an M.B.A. from Marquette University. Her first novel, What the Body Remembers, was published in 1999 in English and is in the process of being translated into nine other languages. It was awarded the 2000 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Canada and the Caribbean region. She has received numerous literary awards since 1995, including India’s national Shastri Award (silver medal) for English prose. She resides in Milwaukee and is currently working on her next novel.Margaret Benbow, Fiction
Madison
Margaret Benbow is a native Wisconsinite living in Madison who began writing stories as soon as she could print. Her award-winning stories and poems have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Zoetrope, The Georgia Review, Wisconsin Fiction, The Wisconsin Academy Review, The Kenyon Review, and many others. Her 1997 collection of poems, Stalking Joy, won the Walt McDonald First Book Award. She is now at work on a novel, Boy Into Panther, from which several excerpts have already been published.Deborah Bernhardt, Poetry
Madison
Deborah Bernhardt received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College. After working in NYC as a Photo Editor she accepted a Fellowship from The University of Arizona Creative Writing Program (MFA ’98). While in Tucson she served as Poetry Editor/Art Editor of Sonora Review. She was a 1999 Writer-In-Residence at Penn State Altoona, a 2000-2001 Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, and a 2001-2002 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Her manuscript, “Echolalia,” has been a finalist for the New Issues First Book Prize, The Ahsahta Press/Sawtooth Poetry Book Prize, The University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series First Book Prize, The Verse Press Book Prize, and the Center for Book Arts Poetry Chapbook Competition. Ms. Bernhardt currently teaches Creative Writing Workshops at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.Devin Corbin, Non-fiction
Barron
Devin Corbin is a writer from rural northwestern Wisconsin who has published essays and translations. He has a B.A. in English from UW—Eau Claire and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Currently living in Barron, Wisconsin, Mr. Corbin is at work on a collection of essays about the environmental and cultural history of a farm that his family has owned near Birchwood, Wisconsin, for four generations. He is also completing a doctoral dissertation in English through the University of Minnesota, where his research examines the literary and philosophical influences on writing about environmental restoration.Richard Kalinoski, Playwriting
Oshkosh
Richard Kalinoski is an assistant professor in theatre at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. In May of 2001 his play “Beast On The Moon” won 5 Moliere Awards in Paris including Best Play from the Repertory. In October of 2001 the same play won five ACE Awards in Buenos Aires, Argentina including Best Play. Mr. Kalinoski’s play “Between Men and Cattle” was nominated for a Barrymore Award for Best New Play in Philadelphia in the Fall of 2000. “Beast On The Moon” has been translated into 7 languages and has been produced and/or performed in some twenty countries with at least 40 productions in the U.S. Mr. Kalinoski also won the Osborn Award in 1996 for Best New Play by an emerging playwright produced outside of New York City (Humana Festival).Ronald Rindo, Fiction
Pickett
Ron Rindo was born in Milwaukee in 1959 and has lived in Wisconsin most of his life. He grew up in Muskego, graduated from Carroll College in Waukesha in 1981 with degrees in English and French, and completed his Ph.D. in English at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee in 1989. He joined the English Department at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh in 1992 where he is currently Associate Professor, Director of the graduate program, and Associate Chair of the Department of English. He also teaches American Literature and creative writing. Mr. Rindo’s first collection of short stories, Suburban Metaphysics and Other Stories, was published by New Rivers Press (Minneapolis, MN) in 1990; his second collection, Secrets Men Keep, was published in 1995. Both books received Outstanding Achievement Recognition from the Wisconsin Library Association for being among the top ten books published by a Wisconsin writer in 1990 and 1995, respectively. He is currently at work on revisions of his first novel, and plans to begin a new short story cycle this summer.Mark Turcotte, Poetry
Fish Creek
Mark Turcotte is the author of four poetry collections, including The Feathered Heart and Le Chant de la Route, a bilingual edition published in France. His newest book, Exploding Chippewas, is in its second printing. His poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, POETRY and Prairie Schooner. A short story, “The Tractor Man,” has just been published by the Wisconsin Academy Review magazine. Mr. Turcotte received his first literary arts fellowship in 1999 from the Wisconsin Arts Board, and received a Literary Completion Grant from the Lannon Foundation in 2001. A member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, Turcotte lives in Fish Creek, Wisconsin.Geoffrey Gordon, Chamber Music
Milwaukee
Geoffrey Gordon, a prolific and active composer of innovative new music, makes his home in Milwaukee. His works reflect his vital interest in visual arts, either in terms of abstract reaction to a specific work or by adopting a technique from visual art like collage. His work has attracted international attention. In addition to having his works performed all over the United States, he has been commissioned to create works for noted musicians and ensembles based in France and Germany and his works have been performed in Italy, Greece and the United Kingdom. He is the recipient of such awards as the Astral Career Grant from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts and the Andy Warhol Social Observer Prize from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He is also active in the local music scene, composing commissioned works for and serving as a composer-in-residence for the Milwaukee Symphony.
Contact: Renee Tertin, 608/267-2027
Date Posted: 1/14/03
