AWI Faculty

Directors

	Edith Isaac-Rose is director of Art Workshop International; painter, teacher, and graduate of the Chicago Art Institute, B.A.E. She’s represented by Phyllis Kind Gallery in New York. Isaac-Rose’s been a Visiting Artist, American Academy in Rome, 2003; and Vermont Studio Center Fellow, 2005. She’s exhibited in the U.S. and abroad, taught at Ohio State, Columbia, Princeton Art Association, and in her studio. In addition, she has lectured and critiqued in various schools in the Northeast and conducted art workshops in the U.S. and abroad. Her work is in the Hirshhorn Museum and other important collections. edithir@mindspring.com www.phylliskindgallery.com .
	Bea Kreloff director of Art Workshop International, is a painter, teacher, and former head of the art department, Fieldston School, New York. She’s taught painting workshops, seminars, and lectured on art at Cooper Union, Marymount Manhattan College, Women's Caucus for Art, The New School University, The College Art Association, and numerous art groups. Her work is exhibited nationally and internationally and is in a number of private collections. Kreloff has conducted art workshops in the U.S. and overseas since 1979. She has been a director of Art Workshop International for 30 years. bk@artworkshopintl.com .
	Chris Spencer director of Art Workshop International, manages publications, travel, and coordination with teachers, students, and organizations. She is an artist and a board member of Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts. A retired vice president, investments, of Morgan Stanley and Certified Financial Planner, Spencer also taught continuing education classes and wrote investment columns for local newspapers in Minneapolis. She is a partner in Trigance Press, which won Franklin and Midwest Book awards. In 2008, the University of Minnesota recognized her as an Outstanding Alumna. ces1000@earthlink.net .
	Charles Kreloff Art Workshop International associate, has run his own design studio for over 15 years. A publications and book art director, his clients include Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins, Random House, Viking Penguin, Scholastic, and Conde Nast. Kreloff has taught graphic design and typography at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is also the co-author of the books Is Your Dog Gay?, Is Your Cat Gay?, and Pills for Cats. He is currently working on a screenplay. charles@charleskreloffdesign.com .

Faculty

	Dorothy Allison is the author of Bastard Out of Carolina, a finalist for the National Book Award, and Cavedweller (Dutton, 1998) a national bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, as well as the memoir Two or Three Things I know for Sure (Dutton, 1995). Her poetry The Women Who Hate Me (1990), short fiction Trash, (1989), and essays Skin: Talking About Sex, Class and Literature (1995) were published in small press editions by Long Haul and Firebrand Books. Her essays on writing appear in many anthologies—the most recent can be found in Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer, edited by Bret Anthony Johnston (Random House, 2008) and The Writer's Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House (Tin House, 2009). A novel, She Who, is forthcoming from Penguin .
	Caterina Bertolotto has taught Italian at the New School University for over 25 years and received a Distinguished University Teaching Award. She teaches workshops in the latest methodologies for learning/teaching foreign languages. Bertolotto has developed her own teaching method which is extremely effective, step-by-step, filled with variety and fun, and helps you achieve superb communication skills. She’s co-authored four textbooks and produced a two-volume Italian Language CD and a dialogue CD in PowerPoint. You will find the class easy, fun, and effective. Caterina is also an accomplished artist. chetty1999@aol.com www.caterinabertolotto.com .
	Nina Di Giovanni Italian Canadian mosaicist and visual artist Nina Di Giovanni invites you to share her passion for mosaic and expertise in teaching in a supportive and individualized setting. Since studying in Ravenna Italy in 1990 she has been an award winning innovator in the world of mosaic and has an extensive portfolio including public art, an exquisite contemporary mosaic product line, various unique architectural installations and has exhibited throughout Canada and the US. She has taught in Canadian universities and colleges and most recently in Oaxaca, Mexico where she directs an art center and gallery specializing in mosaic. .
	Ellen Eagle is represented by Forum Gallery, New York (www.forumgallery.com). She teaches at the Art Students League and at the National Academy School of Fine Arts, both in New York. Her pastel portrait and figure paintings are the cover article of The Pastel Journal, June 2006. American Artist Magazine profiled her in "The Empathetic Portrait", December 2004. She has been awarded three residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and was artist-in-residence at Walt Whitman School in Long Island, New York. Ellen's artwork has been reproduced in The New York Times, Classical Drawing Atelier (Watson-Guptill) by Juliette Aristede , The Portrait Signature Magazine, Gallery Guide and The Newark Star Ledger, which described her pastels as having an "exquisite transparency not seen for centuries". Her work will be profiled in the upcoming Classical Drawing; A Living Tradition (Sterling Publishers) by James McElhinney. Her essays about painting have been published in Linea, The Journal of The Art Students League of New York. She has had three solo shows and has exhibited at the Butler Institute of American Art, the Frye Art Musuem, National Academy Museum, Arkansas Art Center, Albright Knox Gallery, New Jersey State Museum and Seraphin Gallery, among others. She recently completed a portrait of writer Maxine Hong Kingston. Many private and corporate collectors own her pastel paintings, and she is the recipient of numerous grants and awards. ellen@elleneagleportraits.com www.elleneagleportraits.com .
	Sally Gall is a photographer living and working in New York City. In addition to her fine art career, she teaches photography, and works as an editorial and advertising landscape and lifestyle photographer. Her work is in numerous museum and corporate collections and she has been awarded several prestigious fellowships, which include two MacDowell Colony Fellowships and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency. Gall has published two books of photographs, The Waters Edge, (Umbra Editions/Chronicle Books, 1995) with an essay on her work by writer James Salter, and Subterranea, (Umbrage Editions, 2005) with an essay on her work by two-time U.S. Poet Laureate Mark Strand. Gall has a twenty-five year history of solo and group shows at museums and galleries. She has had seven solo exhibitions with the Julie Saul Gallery, New York City .
	Vivian Gornick Vivian Gornick writes essays, memoirs, and literary criticism. She is the author of eight books, among them Fierce Attachments (a memoir), Approaching Eye Level (personal essays), The End of the Novel of Love (critical essays), and The Men In My Life (more critical essays). She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her work has been nominated twice for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has taught non-fiction writing in MFA programs all over the country, and is currently teaching at The New School in New York City. .
	Charles Hobson Charles Hobson is an Emmy Award winning filmmaker and educator has taught at Vassar College, Columbia University, The University of Pennsylvania and The University of Munich where he was a Senior Fulbright scholar 1996-97. His work has been shown on PBS, BBC, ABC. CBS and Arte (France and Germany). .
	Robert J. Hughes was a long-time staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal, where he wrote on a broad range of areas, including fine art, collecting, auctions, corporate earnings, television, movies, music, food, publishing and philanthropy. He has also reported extensively on the retail and travel industries. He is the author of the novels, Late and Soon and the forthcoming The Rectory and is coauthor, with Michael Drew, of The Ladder, a business book coming out next year. In addition, Hughes writes on business and the arts for several business and cultural sites, including SmartMoney and ClassicalTV. He lives in New York City. rjhughes2@yahoo.com .
	G. Brian Karas is a prolific and versatile author-illustrator of many children’s books including Atlantic, an ALA Notable book, Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor title Home on the Bayou, and Are You Going To Be Good? by Cari Best, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book. He has also illustrated many popular titles by other authors including Saving Sweetness by Diane Stanley, The High Rise Private Eyes early reader series by Cynthia Rylant, and Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by Candace Fleming. He lives with his two sons in New York’s Hudson Valley. brian@gbriankaras.com www.gbriankaras.com .
	Paulette Licitra is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Alimentum—The Literature of Food, the award-winning literary journal of food-related fiction, poetry, and essays. Since 2005 the journal has been featured for notable stories and essays in Best American Essays and the O’Henry Prize Stories. She previously was food editor for the webzine Urban Desires, and food columnist for the Riverdale Press. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Journal of Italian Food, Wine & Travel, Tea, Spectacle, Italian America, Bird Watcher’s Digest, Nevada, and Global City Review, among other publications. She is currently working on a magic realist food novel featuring a Kitchen Mystic and her hapless apprentice. She co-wrote the recipe-poem book PoEatry with writer Esther Cohen. Paulette received her culinary arts diploma from the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City, and has studied with home cooks all over Italy, including Emilia Romagna, Lazio, Liguria, the Veneto, and Campania. Paulette conducts writing workshops and cooking classes in New York and Nashville, and taught literary magazine writing & editing at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY. www.alimentumjournal.com .
	S.J. Rozan born and raised in the Bronx, is the author of eight books in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series, and of Absent Friend, which Booklist called "one of the best crime novels of 2004," and In This Rain. She also edited the short-story collection Bronx Noir which won a NAIBA Notable Book of the Year award. Her Winter and Night won the Edgar, Nero, and Macavity awards for best novel. Earlier books have won the Shamus and Anthony awards for best novel and have been Edgar nominees. Her short story "Double-crossing Delancey" won the Edgar for best short story, and two more stories were nominated for it. Her next series novel, The Shanghai Moon, came out in 2009. Rozan is a former Mystery Writers of America National Board member, a current Sisters in Crime National Board member, and ex-President of the Private Eye Writers of America. She speaks and lectures widely and for years interviewed writers at New York's 92nd St. Y in a series she originated, "Mysterious Conversations." In January 2003 she was an invited speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. A former architect in a practice that focuses on police stations, firehouses, and zoos, Rozan lives in lower Manhattan. SJRozan@aol.com www.sjrozan.com .
	Justo J. Sánchez an award-winning cultural journalist, has consulted for Sotheby's and important galleries in the US and abroad. Mr. Sanchez graduated from Harvard and studied art history at NYU's Institute of Fine Arts. He taught at the University of Florida's New World School of the Arts. His students have shown at the Whitney Biennial and are represented by serious international galleries. While teaching, he published humanities textbooks. He has been interviewed by THE NEW YORK TIMES, NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, NPR, BBC, CBC, among others, on cultural and sociopolitical matters. Mr. Sanchez is currently a lecturer in museums, art institutions, and, recently, at Art Palm Beach and Miami International Art Fair. He studied trecento art under Colin Eisler at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts. .
	Dinitia Smith is the author of three novels, including her latest, The Illusionist (Scribner), which Stephen King praised for its “mesmerizing, erotic suspense.” Until recently, Smith was a cultural correspondent for The New York Times based in New York, where she wrote on literary subjects. She has taught at Columbia University and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and has also written several screenplays. Smith won an Emmy Award for an NBC documentary and her work has been shown at the New York Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum. Her short fiction has been published in many literary journals. dinitiasmith@gmail.com .
	Oscar Vallazza an Italian native-speaker, born and raised in Trento, has taught Italian for over 15 years. He is currently teaching college classes at the Art Institute of Seattle and adult education classes for the Dante Alighieri Society’s Italian program at Seattle University. Oscar has lived and worked in many countries, including the U.S., Germany, Holland, the Czech Republic and Australia. He is currently working on a research project on multicultural identity for his Master’s in Adult Learning and Global Change. He has a B.I.S. in Cross-cultural Communication from Vermont-based World Learning’s SIT Graduate Institute. He is fluent in Italian, English, German and Dutch and has worked for many years as an Italian language teacher, ESL teacher, interpreter and translator. He is an honorary member of the Dante Alighieri Society in Seattle and also taught at the Dante Alighieri Society in Sydney, Australia. training_across_cultures@yahoo.com .
	Jayne Wenger is a director and dramaturg whose exclusive focus is on original material. She is the past Artistic Director of the Bay Area Playwrights Foundation. She leads workshops on play development around the country, is nationally recognized for her work on new plays, and has developed the work of acclaimed playwrights nationwide. www.jaynewenger.com .