leeway fcnf program book

Susan Abulhawa

Robin Black

Rachel Cantor

Lorene Cary

Yvonne Chism-Peace

Gloria Klaiman

Molly Layton

Teresa Leo

Susan Magee

Ilana Stanger-Ross

Carol Towarnicky

Sharon White

Recipients of The Leeway Foundation’s

2003 Emerging and Established Artists Awards

Reading SeriesFiction & Creative Nonfiction

In celebration of thenecessity, beauty and

power of the work of women artists.

123 South Broad Street, Suite 2040Philadelphia, PA 19109215-545-4078

I N F O @ L E E W A Y . O R G

W W W . L E E W A Y . O R G

The Leeway Foundation supports individual women

artists, arts programs and arts organizations,

focusing on the Greater Philadelphia region, in order

to help them achieve personal and community

transformation.

The Leeway Awards to Emerging and Established

Artists were created to recognize and encourage

the vital, visionary work of the Philadelphia

region’s community of women artists. Given

annually for the past ten years in a selected

visual or literary discipline, awards are based on

artistic excellence.

The 2003 award recipients include writers of

diverse styles, forms, traditions and points of view;

and their unique voices have the power to

illuminate, stir, challenge and heal us. We’re

honored to recognize these extraordinary women

writers. While 12 artists were chosen for awards,

Leeway deeply appreciates all the women writers who

bravely dedicate themselves to writing.

Kick-off CelebrationTuesday, November 11, 2003

Group Reading: 6:30–7:30pm

Reception: 7:30–8:30pm

:

The Painted Bride Art Center

230 Vine Street, Philadelphia

Featuring all of the recipients.

2003

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Friday, November 147:00pmPhiladelphia Art Alliance251 South 18th Street :

Susan AbulhawaYvonne Chism-PeaceMolly Layton

Wednesday, November 196:30pmFleisher Art Memorial709-721 Catharine Street :

Lorene CaryCarol Towarnicky

Tuesday, December 27:00pmKelly Writers House3805 Locust WalkUPenn Campus :

Robin BlackIlana Stanger-RossSharon White

Wednesday, December 106:30pmRosenbach Museum & Library2008-2010 Delancey Place :

Rachel CantorGloria KlaimanSusan Magee

Reading Series

All events are free and open to the public.For more information, visit www.leeway.org or call 215.545.4078.

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Philadelphia Inquirer and, as a juror for their first annual

Readers’ Prize, for ELLE magazine. She has also

published personal essays. Robin lives in Bala Cynwyd

with her husband Richard and three children.

Rachel Cantor

Emerging Artist Award Recipient

My stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The

Paris Review, DoubleTake, The New England Review,

Chelsea, The Antioch Review, Gargoyle, and The

Greensboro Review. The Paris Review story was

short-listed for an O’Henry Award; another story

was chosen by Steve Dixon to represent the Johns

Hopkins Writing Seminars in the Scribner’s national

Best of the Fiction Workshops competition. I have

been a fellow at Yaddo, MacDowell, VCCA, Ragdale,

Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain, and the Vermont

Studio Center. I am completing a collection and

revising a first novel.

I grew up in Italy, have lived and worked in

Australia, France, India, and Pakistan, and have

traveled to more than 30 countries. A professional

writer/editor for nearly 20 years, mostly for

nonprofits that work in developing countries, I have

also completed short-term writing assignments in

Azerbaijan, Kenya, Mexico, Rwanda, Turkey, and

Zimbabwe.

Susan Abulhawa


Susan Abulhawa was born in Kuwait to Palestinian refugees

who were expelled from Palestine in 1967, when Israel

conquered the West Bank and Gaza. She attended primary

schooling in Kuwait, lived in a Jerusalem orphanage from

1980 until she came to the Unites States in 1983. She

graduated from Thomasville High School in North

Carolina, where she was a ward of the state in a children’s

home. In 1993, she received her Bachelor’s Degree from

Pfeiffer University, majoring in biology and graduating

with honors. She later completed a Master’s Degree in

biomedical science from the University of South Carolina

Medical School and worked in the pharmaceutical

industry as a research scientist for five years. She began a

freelance writing career after the start of the second

Palestinian uprising in September of 2000. Her work has

been featured in many publications and she is currently

working on her first novel.

Robin Black


Robin Black has lived in the Philadelphia area for more

than 15 years. She first began writing fiction at Sarah

Lawrence College in the early 1980s. In the past two years,

while working with the Rittenhouse Writers’ Group, Robin

has devoted increasing time to her writing. Her story

“Gaining Ground” was featured in 2002 in the InterAct

Theatre series “Writing Aloud,” and will appear in the Alaska

Quarterly Review this fall. She has reviewed books for the

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Photo credt: Joanna E. Morrissey

fellowships and awards from Mary Roberts Rinehart,

New York State Council on the Arts, and Bronx Council

on the Arts. Published in one of the earliest editions of

Pushcart Prize Anthology, she also performed in the

inaugural Poetry at the Public Theater series and

Manhattan Theater Club. Her poetry books are Iwilla

Soil, Iwilla Scourge, and Iwilla Rise (Chameleon

Productions Inc. 1985, 1986, 1999).

In 2002 she began her ezine career with fiction in

Pindeldyboz, Moxie, Moondance, The3rdegree and

others. Her stories can be accessed from her home

page: http://home.earthlink.net/~iwilla/index.html.

Gloria Klaiman


I have spent most of my life working as a writer and

editor. Much of the writing, as with most writers,

was done during found time while doing other work

and caring for my family. In my professional life I

have worked primarily as an editor of academic and

medical books and journals, which led me to my

current position as the managing editor of a clinical

web site for physicians. My writing has been enriched

by printmaking and painting, which deepened my

appreciation of how messy artistic mistakes can

suddenly reveal the unexpected and beautiful. I write

and make messes, artistic and otherwise, in an old row

house, where I live with my husband David and our cat

Sophie. We travel often to Washington, DC, to visit our

two grown daughters Tamar and Danielle.

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Lorene Cary

Established Artist Award Recipient

Lorene Cary is the author of two novels, The Price of A

Child, Philadelphia’s and Buffalo, New York’s One Book, One

City choice for 2003, and Pride (1998), and a best-selling

memoir, Black Ice.

In 1998 Lorene Cary founded Art Sanctuary, a series that

brings excellent black artists to speak, perform and give

workshops at the Church of the Advocate, a National

Historic Landmark Building in North Philadelphia.

Currently a lecturer in creative writing at the University

of Pennsylvania, where she was a 1998 recipient of the

Provost’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, Cary has

received The Philadelphia Award for civic service, a Pew

Fellowship in the Arts Fellowship and honorary

doctorates from Colby College in Maine, Keene State

College in New Hampshire, and Chestnut Hill College in

Philadelphia. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband,

the Rev. Robert C. Smith, and daughters Laura and Zoë.

Yvonne Chism-Peace


The poet Yvonne writes short fiction under the name

Yvonne Chism-Peace. Born and raised in Philadelphia, she

attended St. Francis de Sales parochial school, West

Catholic Girls’ High School and Rosemont College before

moving to Manhattan where she attended NYU and Bank

Street College of Education for graduate studies.

While poetry editor at MS. (1974-1987), she won two NEA

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Photo credt:

Photo credt: Tamara Peace

include a 2002 Poetry Fellowship from the Pew

Fellowships in the Arts, a 2001 Literature/Creative

Nonfiction Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council

on the Arts, and a Pushcart Prize nomination. She is a

former columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer’s

Commentary Page, past Editor-in-Chief of Painted

Bride Quarterly, and has served as Acting Director of

the Kelly Writers House at the University of

Pennsylvania. Currently she serves as a Contributing

Editor for The American Poetry Review as well as

Xconnect Magazine. She works at the University of

Pennsylvania.

Susan Magee


My father always said, “I’ve been smart and I’ve been

lucky, and lucky is better.” He was right. I’ve been

lucky to have met my husband, the funny, smart,

inventor and programmer, David Kephart. Lucky to

have my beautiful boy, Christopher. Lucky to have a

few friends and two sisters who really know me.

Lucky in that I’ve been able to make my living as a

writer of non-fiction books and other projects.

Lucky to know what gives my life meaning-writing

fiction. And I feel very, very lucky to have won a

Leeway Award.

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Molly Layton


A psychologist in private practice, Molly Layton writes

essays for the Psychotherapy Networker, a magazine which

won a National Magazine Award based in part on her

writing. She was born in Texas, studied philosophy at the

University of Texas, but after the birth of her two children

and the family’s move to Philadelphia, she gained her

doctorate in clinical psychology from Temple University.

Son David is a filmmaker in Austin, Texas, and daughter

Rebecca is a faculty artist teaching silk screening at the

new Applied Art Institute in Amagansatt, Long Island.

“I watched the kids makes themselves into artists,” Molly

says, “and while I noticed that artists’ lives lack certain

securities, such as automobiles and health insurance, I

have nonetheless followed them into it.” Her short

fiction, “Senseless,” was nominated by Carve Magazine

for publication in the Pushcart Anthology 2000.

Teresa Leo


Teresa Leo’s poetry and essays have appeared in

Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review’s Philly

Edition, New Orleans Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer,

Painted Bride Quarterly, Xconnect, La Petite Zine, The

Portable Boog Reader Philadelphia, and the anthology

Whatever it Takes: Women on Women’s Sport (Farrar,

Straus & Giroux, 1999). She has interviewed Ricky Moody,

Martín Espada, and Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. Her awards

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Photo credt: Mark Stehle

Photo credt: Jeff Hurwitz

Sharon White

Established Artist Award Recipient

Sharon White is the author of Field Notes, A

Geography of Mourning, a memoir, and Bone House, a

collection of poetry. Field Notes was awarded

Honorable Mention for the Julia Ward Howe Prize

from the Boston Authors Club. Her work has

appeared in magazines and anthologies including

House Beautiful, Yankee, Appalachia, and The North

American Review. She has received fellowships and

awards from the National Endowment for the Arts,

Colorado Council on the Arts, Bread Loaf Writers’

Conference, the Artist-in-Residence Program in

Rocky Mountain National Park, and others. She lives

in Philadelphia and teaches at Temple University.

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Ilana Stanger-Ross


Ilana Stanger-Ross received her Master’s in Fiction from

Temple University in May of 2003. Her work has been

published in Lilith Magazine, Red Rock Review, and The

Bellevue Review and online at KillingtheBuddha.com and

Fiction Attic. She is a recent recipient of a Ragdale

Foundation Artist’s Residency, and is currently working

on a novel.

Carol Towarnicky


Except for brief intervals on maternity leave and

on strike, Carol Towarnicky, 55, has spent the last 29

years working for the Philadelphia Daily News—the

last 11 as its chief editorial writer. She began writing

fiction in 1995.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Towarnicky has a bachelor

of arts degree in English from Ohio University in Athens.

Towarnicky was a co-finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in

Editorial Writing and won the 1993 Eugene C. Pulliam

Fellowship for Editorial Writers as well as several national

and local journalism awards. She also has been honored

for her community volunteer work, and marched for nine

years in the comic division of the Mummers Parade.

She has been married for 32 years to Ron Goldwyn, also a

writer at the Philadelphia Daily News. They have two grown

children, Mara and Nick Goldwyn.

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