WISCONSIN ARTS BOARD

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Wisconsin Arts Board Awards Fellowships in
Literary Arts, Music Composition, and Dance Choreography

Nine Wisconsin artists will receive fellowships for work in literary arts, music composition, and dance choreography from the Wisconsin Arts Board as a part of its 2007 Artist Fellowship Awards program. The recipients are:

Literary Arts

• Dwight Allen, Fiction
  Madison
• Robin Chapman, Poetry
  Madison
• Jim Ferris, Non-Fiction
  Verona
• Judith Harway, Poetry
  Shorewood
• Richard Kalinioski, Playwriting
  Oshkosh
• Allison Townsend, Poetry
  Stoughton
• Ron Wallace, Poetry
  Madison

Music Composition

• Steve Wiest, Jazz
  Fort Atkinson

Dance Choreography

• Janet Lilly, Modern
  Milwaukee

This statewide program provides $8,000 awards to outstanding professional artists in recognition of their significant contributions to their field. These funds are intended to be used to create new work, complete work in progress, and/or pursue activities that contribute to their artistic growth.

The Wisconsin Arts Board received 106 applications from literary artists, 15 applications from music composers, and 17 applications from dance choreographers/performance artists from throughout the state. Awards were determined by three panels of arts professionals, based on the artistic quality of the applicants’ work samples. Panelists recommended the nine artists to members of the Wisconsin Arts Board for its final approval.

The Artist Fellowship Awards program offers fellowships in a variety of disciplines over a two-year cycle. Application deadlines for the upcoming fellowship cycle, available in visual and media arts, will be September 17, 2007. Wisconsin’s professional visual and media artists are eligible to apply. Applications will be available on-line by August 6, 2007.  More information on the program is available at http://www.artsboard.wisconsin.gov/static/fellwshp.htm. Artists may also call 608/266-0190 or email the Wisconsin Arts Board at artsboard@wisconsin.gov to include their name on the electronic mailing list which will automatically send notice when the grant cycle opens.

Biographies

LITERARY ARTS

Dwight Allen, Madison (fiction)
Dwight Allen was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and graduated from Lawrence University (1974) and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop (1977). He has published two books of fiction, THE GREEN SUIT (2000) and JUDGE (2003). His stories and essays have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies. In New York, where he lived for a decade and a half, he worked for a book publisher and was on the editorial staff of The New Yorker magazine. He has lived in Madison since 1991. In 2004, he taught writing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He is married to Michele Gassman and has a son named George.

Robin Chapman, Madison (poetry)
Robin Chapman is author of eight poetry collections, including The Way In (Tebot Bach) and Images of a Complex World: The Art and Poetry of Chaos (World Scientific, with J.C. Sprott’s fractal art and definitions), both of which won the Posner Poetry Award, and The Only Everglades in the World (Parallel Press). Her poems have appeared in The American Scholar, The Hudson Review, Southern Review, and OnEarth, among other journals. Her book The Dreamer Who Counted the Dead will be published this spring, as well as an anthology co-edited with Judith Strasser, On Retirement: 75 Poems. Emerita professor of Communicative Disorders at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, she lives in Madison with her husband Will Zarwell.

Jim Ferris, Verona (non-fiction)
Jim Ferris is the author of Facts of Life, published by Parallel Press in 2005. The Hospital Poems, his first book of poems, was selected by Edward Hirsch as winner of the 2004 Main Street Rag Book Award. His essay “The Enjambed Body: A Step Toward a Crippled Poetics” was published as the lead essay in The Georgia Review’s special summer 2004 issue on poetry and poetics, and re-published online by Poetry Daily. Recipient of a Literary Artist Fellowship Award in 1998 from the Wisconsin Arts Board, his writing has appeared in dozens of publications, ranging from the Michigan Quarterly Review to weekly newspapers. He recently finished a term as president of the Society for Disability Studies, the leading international scholarly organization in Disability Studies. Winner of multiple teaching awards, Jim Ferris teaches courses in communication arts and disability studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Judith Harway, Shorewood (poetry)
Judith Harway’s poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Adirondack Review, Carolina Quarterly, The Cape Rock, Cottonwood, Cream City Review, Quarterly West, Red River Review, and Southern Poetry Review, as well as in The Memory Box, a chapbook published by Zarigueya Press in 2002. Her work has earned fellowships from the Wisconsin Arts Board, the Hambidge Center and the MacDowell Colony. She is Associate Professor of English at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and holds an MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. With her husband and two children, she makes her home in the Milwaukee area.

Richard Kalinoski, Oshkosh (playwriting)
Richard Kalinoski was awarded the Khorenatsi Medal from the President of the Republic of Armenia in January of 2006. The medal goes to the individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the Arts and Culture of the Republic of Armenia. Kalinoski, a winner of a Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship in 2003 saw his play, Beast on the Moon produced Off-Broadway in April-July of 2005. The play ran 120 performances. Beast on the Moon was chosen to be part of the repertory of the Moscow Arts Theatre in November of 2004. Kalinoski’s Between Men and Cattle (Next Act Theatre 2004) will open for a 10 week run in January of 2007 at the Detroit Repertory Theatre. Kalinoski is an Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh.

Allison Townsend, Stoughton (poetry)
Alison Townsend is the author of The Blue Dress and What the Body Knows. Her poetry and creative nonfiction appear widely, in journals such as Fourth Genre, Gulf Coast, MARGIE, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Southern Review. Recent work in anthologies includes Best American Poetry 2006, Flash Fiction Forward, Sweeping Beauty: Contemporary Women Poets Do Housework, and Kiss Me Goodnight: Poems and Stories by Women Who Were Girls When Their Mothers Died. She has won many awards, including the 2006 Lorine Niedecker prize in poetry from the Council of Wisconsin Writers, and a recent residency at the Virginia Center for the Arts. She teaches English and creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. A runner, hiker, and gardener, she lives with her husband on four acres of restored prairie and oak savanna in the farm country outside Madison.

Ron Wallace, Madison (poetry)
Ron Wallace is the author of twelve books of poetry, fiction, and literary criticism, including LONG FOR THIS WORLD: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, QUICK BRIGHT THINGS: STORIES, and GOD BE WITH THE CLOWN: HUMOR IN AMERICAN POETRY. Felix Pollak Professor of Poetry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he is co-director of the University’s Creative Writing Program and Editor of the University of Wisconsin Press’s Brittingham and Pollak Poetry Series. Married, with two grown daughters and two granddaughters, he divides his time between Madison and a forty-acre farm in Bear Valley, Wisconsin.
 

MUSIC COMPOSITION

Steve Wiest, Fort Atkinson (jazz)
Jazz trombonist-composer-and clinician Steve Wiest first came to the music world’s attention as one of the exciting featured artists with the late Maynard Ferguson. Wiest recently reunited with Ferguson at the Blue Note in New York during the summer of 2006 as part of an all-star alumni band. That same group went into Bennett Studios and recorded works by Wiest, Denis DiBlasio, Chip McNeil, Aaron Lington, and Christian Jacob for Maynard’s final CD to be released in 2006. Wiest has also performed and recorded with the Doc Severinsen Big Band, recording “Swingin’ the Blues” with Doc in 2000. Steve’s new recording for Arabesque Jazz: “Excalibur” has met with wide critical acclaim since its release in August of 2006. The project includes all new original compositions and arrangements by Wiest and features a brilliant big band full of seasoned jazz artists. Currently the Director of Jazz Studies and Trombone at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Wiest also continues to be very successful as a guest artist and clinician for Edwards Trombones throughout the U.S. and Europe. His guest artist activities have been featured at countless universities, high schools, professional groups, jazz festivals, and conferences.
 

DANCE CHOREOGRAPHY

Janet Lilly, Milwaukee (modern)
Janet Lilly, Associate Professor University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, joined the Department of Dance UWM in 1995. From 1983-1991, she was a principal dancer with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, also serving as the company’s rehearsal director and master teacher. As a Jacob Javits fellow Janet received an MFA in Dance with highest honors from the University of Michigan in 1992. Since arriving in Milwaukee, Ms. Lilly has choreographed extensively for the UWM Dance Program as well as continuing to perform and present her work nationally and in New York City.
 

Contact: Renee Tertin, 608/267-2027
Updated: September 12, 2007