Perry Block is a human resources/communications specialist and consultant who lives in Havertown, Pa. 

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Jonathan Pappas teaches in the Intellectual Heritage Department at Temple University.

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Candy Kean is a public schoop teacher in Philadelphia.

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Robert P. Levin is an editor with the Globe & Mail, Canada’s national newspaper. He lives in Toronto.

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Joan Myerson Shrager is a Philadelphia artist. Visit her website at www.joan-myersonshrager.com.

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Rebecca J. Ritzel is a Washington-based arts journalist.

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A.Q. Torby is a freelance technical writer who splits his time between Philadelphia and New York.

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Norman Roessler is an assistant professor at temple University. He lives in Philadelphia.

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Neal Zoren is a free-lance critic who lives in Philadelphia.

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Wendy Rosenfield is a theater critic who lives in Abington Township, Montgomery County, Pa.

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Jane Biberman is a writer and editor who lives in the Society Hill section of Philadelphia and Bucks County, Pa.

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Matthew Green is a painter who lives and works in South Jersey. 

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Kristen Eaton, formerly of Philadelphia, is a free-lance writer who lives in Vermont, where she is putting the finishing touches on her first novel.
(Photo: Witold Henszel, (c)2007.)

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Thom Nickels is an author and writer who lives in the Fishtown-Port Richmond section of Philadelphia. Visit his blog at thomnickels.blogspot.com.

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Jennifer Baldino Bonett is a writer who lives in South Philadelphia.

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Peter Burwasser is a music critic and writer who lives in Philadelphia.

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Judith Stein is an art writer and curator who lives in Center City Philadelphia.

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Alaina Mabaso is a free-lance writer who lives in Philadelphia.

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Josette Bonafino is executive director of Multicultural Youth eXchange in Philadelphia.

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Robert J. Murphy is a medical writer who lives in Drexel Hill, Pa.

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J.F. Pirro is a nationally-recognized journalism and English teacher at Emmaus (Pa.) High School and a widely-published writer. 

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J.T. Barbarese is editor of Story Quarterly, the literary magazine of Rutgers University/ Camden. He lives in Camden, N.J.

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Anne Hamilton is a dramaturg and playwright who lives in Quakertown, Pa.

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Julie Morcate is a junior English major at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J. She lives in Langhorne, Pa.

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Amy Small-McKinney is a writer and poet who lives in Blue Bell, Pa. 

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Marilyn MacGregor is an artist, art historian and writer who recently moved to Philadelphia from the San Francisco Bay area. 

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Julius Ferraro, an actor and free-lance writer, lives in Southampton, Pa. 

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Adam Lippe is a film critic as well as editor and publisher of the website “A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity.”

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Franklin Roberts is a long-time producer of theatrical, public affairs and historical events. He lives in the Society Hill section of Philadelphia.

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John L. Erlich, a former college basketball player, is emeritus professor of social work California State University, Sacramento.

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Mitchell Gordon is a free-lance writer and futurist who lives in Philadelphia. 

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Judy Weightman is a freelance editor/writer who lives in the East Falls section of Philadelphia. 

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Matthew Jakubowski is a literary critic and novelist who lives in West Philadelphia.

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Jeanne Wrobleski is an attorney and arts patron who lives and practices in Center City Philadelphia.

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Richard Carreño is a writer for Writers Clearinghouse and the editor of the cultural blog Junto.blogspot.com. He can be reached via . He is a former visiting scholar at Cambridge University. He lives in Center City Philadelphia.

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Victor L. Schermer is a psychologist and music writer who lives in Center City.

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A.J. Sabatini is an arts writer and academician who lives and teaches in Philadelphia and Arizona.

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Jackie Atkins is a writer who lives in Philadelphia and Cape May, N.J.

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Dr. Carol Rocamora is an educator, playwright, translator and critic. 

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Marge Murray is a writer who lives in Center City Philadelphia.

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Janet Anderson is a widely-published dance writer who lives in Laverock, Pa.

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Bob Levin is an attorney and writer who lives in Berkeley, California. 

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Bob Ingram is a veteran writer/journalist/editor who lives in Burleigh, N.J.

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Pamela Riley is a retired theater director and professor of literature and drama who lives in Old City. 

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Mark Wolverton is a free-lance science writer and playwright who has also published fiction.

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Lynn Denton is an artist, teacher and filmmaker who lives in Bella Vista. Reach her at .

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Linda Bantel is a curator and former director of the Museum of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She lives in Mount Airy.

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Michael Woods is an investment manager who lives in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia.

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Bill Murphy is a news and entertainment journalist who lives in Havertown, Pa.

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Merilyn Jackson writes on dance for the Philadelphia Inquirer and other publications. 

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Brett S. Harrison is a free-lance critic and aspiring screenwriter who lives in University City.

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Broad Street Review welcomes letters from readers, whether they’re just like you or just like Ben Franklin (left). We don’t just tolerate letters; we thrive on them.

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Nathan Sivin is a professor of Chinese culture and of the history of science at Penn. He lives in Chestnut Hill. For more background about him, visit ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~nsivin/pers.html.

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Alan Richman is the longtime food and wine critic for GQ magazine and a native Philadelphian.

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Dan Rottenberg’s biography. For more information, visit his personal website at www.danrottenberg.com.

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Dave Allen is a music writer who specializes in classical and contemporary music. He lives in Philadelphia. 

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Ivan Levison is an advertising copywriter in San Francisco. He is also author of The Levison Letter, a monthly e-mail newsletter about advertising and direct mail marketing.

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Gerald Weales is a retired English professor at the University of pennsylvania and a longtime theater critic.

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Vincent Rinella is an attorney and psychologist (now semi retired), who has been residing in Wyndmoor and writing poetry for the past 30 years. His work has been published in, among other journals, Branch Redd Review and Sixpack. His book CoterieWorks, a collection of lyric poems on set themes dedicated to close friends and intellectual intimates, was published in 1997.

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Victoria Skelly is a retired management consultant with extensive involvement in the world of art. (She is daughter to artist Michael Ciliberti.) She lives in Wayne and can be reached at .

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Tom Purdom () is a science fiction writer and general freelance writer who has been writing about music since 1988.

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Toby Zinman is a professor of English at the University of the Arts and a theater critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Variety. She lives in Haddonfield, N.J.

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Broad Street Review publisher Theodora "Teddy" Ashmead

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Ted K. Hechtman //';l[1]='a';l[2]='/';l[3]='<';l[4]=' 109';l[5]=' 111';l[6]=' 99';l[7]=' 46';l[8]=' 110';l[9]=' 111';l[10]=' 111';l[11]=' 78';l[12]=' 101';l[13]=' 108';l[14]=' 97';l[15]=' 100';l[16]=' 119';l[17]=' 111';l[18]=' 114';l[19]=' 114';l[20]=' 97';l[21]=' 78';l[22]=' 64';l[23]=' 110';l[24]=' 97';l[25]=' 109';l[26]=' 116';l[27]=' 104';l[28]=' 99';l[29]=' 101';l[30]=' 72';l[31]=' 100';l[32]=' 101';l[33]=' 84';l[34]='>';l[35]='\"';l[36]=' 109';l[37]=' 111';l[38]=' 99';l[39]=' 46';l[40]=' 110';l[41]=' 111';l[42]=' 111';l[43]=' 78';l[44]=' 101';l[45]=' 108';l[46]=' 97';l[47]=' 100';l[48]=' 119';l[49]=' 111';l[50]=' 114';l[51]=' 114';l[52]=' 97';l[53]=' 78';l[54]=' 64';l[55]=' 110';l[56]=' 97';l[57]=' 109';l[58]=' 116';l[59]=' 104';l[60]=' 99';l[61]=' 101';l[62]=' 72';l[63]=' 100';l[64]=' 101';l[65]=' 84';l[66]=':';l[67]='o';l[68]='t';l[69]='l';l[70]='i';l[71]='a';l[72]='m';l[73]='\"';l[74]='=';l[75]='f';l[76]='e';l[77]='r';l[78]='h';l[79]='a ';l[80]='<'; for (var i = l.length-1; i >= 0; i=i-1){ if (l[i].substring(0, 1) == ' ') document.write("&#"+unescape(l[i].substring(1))+";"); else document.write(unescape(l[i])); } //]]> " target="_blank">() is a poet, playwright and former financial consultant who lives in Westbury, N.Y., which is not and has never been Philadelphia. All in all, he would rather be in Philadelphia. He has written plays, poems and songs. He still does. He has poems posted at www.narrowdalenoon.com and his songs, such as they are, can be found at  www.myspace.com/teakayache. 

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Steve Cohen ()

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Steve Antinoff teaches philosophy and Eastern thought at University of the Arts. He lives in Center City.

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SaraKay Smullens (http://www.sarakaysmullens.com) is a licensed diplomate in clinical social work and and a trained family therapist and educator.  She lives and practices in Center City.

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Robert Zaller is a history professor at Drexel University, a playwright and poet, and a critic whose contributions have appeared in the New York Times and The Nation and locally in  the Inquirer, Seven Arts, the Welcomat, Philadelphia Forum and Schuylkill Valley Journal. He lives in Bala Cynwyd.

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Rob Laymon has written for many publications across the country, probably when he should have been doing something else. Raised in the free and independent state of South Jersey, he now lives part time in North Carolina and part time in Philadelphia. Read his blog at http://fightingshy.blogspot.com .

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Robert Liss () is a psychologist and former basketball player who lives in San Francisco.

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Richard R. Feudale is an attornmey who lives and works in Mount Carmel, Pa.

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Rick Soisson is a writer, poet and cartoonist who teaches writing and literature at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. Previously he was director of patient relations at Medical College of Philadelphia for 15 years. He lives in East Falls with his wife and daughter.

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Richard Chaitt works in promotional advertising and lives in Havertown, Pa.  "I am not a professional writer, although I did stay at a Holiday Inn."  As a college student in the late ‘60s he was a columnist and movie reviewer for the Temple News.  "The great thing about the internet," he adds, "is the easy access to people with whom I would not normally have contact."

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Reed Stevens, a former Philadelphian, is the author of  Treasure of Taos, winner of the National Presswomen’s First Prize for fiction, and Santa Fe Dreamhouse (2009). She lives in Campbell, Calif., where she can be reached at . Visit her blog, “In My Dreamhouse,” at reedstevens.blogspot.com.

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Rebecca Davis is founder, president and artistic director of Rebecca Davis Dance Company, based in Philadelphia.

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Rathe Miller is a free lance writer who lives in the University City section of Philadelphia.

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Ralph Keyes, Antioch Class of 1967, is author of 14 books, including The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life (St. Martin’s, 2004) and, most recently, The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When (St. Martin’s, 2006). Visit his website at www.ralphkeyes.com.

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RA Friedman is a photographer who lives and works in Center City Philadelphia. He specializes in fine art images that engage in dialogue with vintage photography.  Visit his website at rafriedman.com.

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Melissa Roth has written thousands of post-its, emails, instant messages, numerous essays, and one extremely apologetic note left on the windshield of a Jaguar in West Hollywood. She currently lives in New York and writes a monthly column, “Hot and Bothered,” for http://www.madashellclub.net.

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Patrick D. Hazard is a retired professor of American Civilization at Penn and Beaver College (now Arcadia University). He lives in Weimar, Germany. 

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Maria Thompson Corley is a Juilliard-trained concert pianist and published novelist. She lives in Lancaster, Pa. 

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After 36 years as a cellist with thye Philadelphia Orchestra, Lloyd Smith retired in 2003 to devote himself to composing and chamber music.

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Brief biography of contributor Lewis Whittington.

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Lesley Valdes is the critic-at-large for WRTI, 90.1 FM She is the former classical music and dance critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the San Jose Mercury News.  She lives in South Philadelphia.

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A brief biography of Leonard Boasberg ().

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Joy Tomme is an editor and writer who lives south of Center City.  She was formerly an associate editor of the Welcomat (now Philadelphia Weekly), for which she also wrote a religion column. Her jaundiced views of organized religion, she adds, "have not changed even though my son became an Episcopal priest and God help him!" Her virulently anti-Bush blog, Ratbang Diary, can be visited at ratbangdiary.blogspot.com.

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Josh Hitchens is an actor and director who works in Philadelphia and lives in Glenside.

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Jonathan M. Stein, a Center City resident and frequent theatergoer, is general counsel for Community Legal Services Inc.

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Gresham Riley () is president emeritus of Colorado College (Colorado Springs, Col.), former president of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and a professor of philosophy who is currently engaged in an extended research project on the topic of evil. He lives in Old City in Philadelphia.

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Poet and interdisciplinary performance artist Jaamil Olawale Kosoko. Visit his website at www.kosokoperformance.org.

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F. Lennox Campello is a widely published free-lance art critic and is often heard on NPR discussing art issues. He has curated more than 100 art shows in the last decade in the Mid-Atlantic region and publishes Mid-Atlantic Daily Campello Art News, one of the world’s highest-ranked daily art blogs. He lives in Media, Pa.

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Diana Burgwyn is a writer who specializes in classical music. She is a critic for the London-based publication Opera Now and is the program annotator for the Opera Company of Philadelphia. Burgwyn is author of the 75-year history of The Curtis Institute of Music, and she is compiling an oral history of that organization.  Her oral history of the Marlboro School of Music and Festival in Vermont, a leading center for chamber music, was part of Marlboro’s 25-year anniversary celebration.  Burgwyn was a contributor to the centennial history of The Philadelphia Orchestra. She lives in Center City.

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Daniel Webster was the Inquirer‘s music critic from 1964 to 1999. He lives in Wilmington, Del.

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A few autobiographical words about Dan Coren.

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Charles Morscheck is a professor of art history in the Department of Visual Studies at Drexel University. He lives in Ardmore, Pa.

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Caroline Dunlop Millett is a design and fine arts consultant, and also creates and directs arts projects for institutions. She lives in the University City area of Philadelphia. Visit her website at www.millettdesign.com. 

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Bob Cronin has been a theater professional— actor, director, teacher, playwright, and critic— for more than 35 years. He writes about New York Theater on BustardBlog.

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Biography and complete C.V. for Bernard Jacobson

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Benjamin B. Olshin, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of philosophy at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and the director of the Center for the Creative Economy. He has taught history, history of science, fine arts and design, and existential and Chinese philosophy at various institutions in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. He can be reached at .

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Perry Block is a human resources/communications specialist and consultant who lives in Havertown, Pa. He is also an inveterate blogger and tweeter, even though he hates the sound of both words and doesn’t know what “inveterate” means. 

Perry’s humor blog, “Nouveau Old, Formerly Cute” (www.nouveauold.com), presents the writings and perceptions of an aging baby boomer making the unhappy transition from middle age to Nouveau Old, bemoaning along the way his departed youth, lost cuteness and inability to cope with a world of tattooed millennials where everyone on TV is under 30.

Mr. Block’s comedic Twitter Site is known as @Bardoron5.  If you have absolutely nothing better to do with your time, it is advised that you find something better. Failing that, you could do worse than follow him. Otherwise please contact Perry Block at .

 
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Jonathan Pappas teaches in the Intellectual Heritage Department at Temple University. He writes fiction and lives in the East Falls section of Philadelphia. Follow his Twitter feed at @jonathanpappas.

 
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Robert P. Levin was born and raised in Philadelphia but has lived in Toronto for nearly a quarter century now. He’s an editor at The Globe and Mail (Canada’s national newspaper). Previously he was executive editor of Maclean’s (Canada’s national newsmagazine) and a Newsweek writer in New York before that. He’s long been known as Bob Levin but has assumed the byline of Robert P. Levin to avoid confusion with another BSR contributor named Bob Levin, who’s a lawyer in Berkeley, California.

 
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In the past 35 years I made art with conventional art materials as a sculptor, potter and painter. I taught myself to create art on the computer and in the last 13 years, the challenge has been to combine technology with artistry, a complex and difficult process.

My art was exhibited in 9 solo exhibitions and more than 60 juried and invitational shows. My digital work is permanently exhibited at the University of Pennsylvania, cited in 2 art textbooks and is listed on London’s Saatchi Gallery website by invitation. Currently I work in a Jewish Museum creating graphics and digital art with a Jewish theme.

My computer paintings are printed on paper, canvas or other materials in sizes ranging from letter to mural size. In addition to original computer paintings I make custom photo montages with personal materials supplied by clients. 

 
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Rebecca Ritzel is a Washington, D.C.-based arts journalist who contributes to the Washington Post and other publications. She also teaches writing at the University of Maryland. She previously spent five years as the arts writer at the Lancaster (Pa.) Intelligencer Journal. She left that paper in 2005 to earn a master’s degree in arts journalism at Syracuse University.

Visit her website at www.rjritzel.com.

Photo: Mark Weinhold.

 
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I am a freelance technical writer who splits his time between Philadelphia and New York. In my free time I like to see plays and movies in both cities. Maybe it’s because I write for a living, but I usually prefer to review plays in a bar after the show rather than write about them. But recently, at the urging of friends, I’ve published reviews in print and on the internet. 

 
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Norm Roessler is an assistant professor at Temple University and the editor of Communications, the Performance Journal of the International Brecht Society. He writes on German and American Theater and reviews plays along the Northeast Corridor as well as in Germany.

 
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Wendy Rosenfield has written freelance features and theater criticism for the Philadelphia Inquirer since 2006. Her “Drama Queen” blog for ArtsJournal.com covers “drama, onstage and off.” She was also chief theater critic for the Philadelphia Weekly from 1995 to 2001.  Currently an M.L.A. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, she received a 2008 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in Theater and Musical Theater, participated in the Bennington Writer’s Workshop, and holds a B.A. in English literature from Bennington College. She was the 2009 and 2010 Guest Critic for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival’s Region II National Critics Institute and is the proud mother of two small but enthusiastic theater aficionados.

 
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Matthew Green is a painter who lives and works in South Jersey. After graduating Rowan University, Green began as a printmaker and mixed media artist. Eventually he moved into realist painting, with decaying, dilapidated buildings as his trademark subject matter. He looks for beauty not in the physical structure of his subjects but in the raw emotion brought upon by neglect and decay.

Green’s most recent project is a painting study of the mysteries and irony of the New Jersey Meadowlands called “Five Miles From Times Square.”

Visit his website at www.mgreenartist.com.

 
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Kristen Eaton’s work has appeared in the periodicals Seven Days and Stage Directions, as well as online at hostelz.com.

Kristen earned a degree in Character Studies (a self-designed major) at Cornell University, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude with her thesis: a novella entitled The Kelpie. She has trained with authors Helena Viramontes, Maureen McCoy and Robert Morgan. 

Kristen has worked and traveled extensively in Ireland, Italy, Maine and Philadelphia, and now lives in Vermont. She is currently seeking an agent for her first full-length novel.

In her spare time, Kristen studies herbalism, storytelling and media culture.  She practices yoga and contact juggling, and develops and maintains the websites VaguelyBohemian.com and TalkToStrangers.org.

For more information, please visit KristenEaton.com.

 
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Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based author of eight published books, including Philadelphia Architecture (2005), which won the Philadelphia AIA Lewis Mumford Architecture Journalism Award.

He is also author of the play, Lincoln in Louisville. In 1990, Mr. Nickels was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and a Hugo Award for his book, Two Novellas.

He has written feature stories, celebrity interviews, and social commentary columns for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Bulletin, City Paper, Philadelphia Weekly and Philadelphia Style magazine. Mr. Nickels is the architectural writer/critic for the Philadelphia Bulletin, the religion editor for Lambda Book Report, a contributing editor at the Weekly Press, a feature writer for ICON magazine, and a weekly columnist for Philadelphia’s STAR publications. Mr. Nickels’ new novel, Spore, will be released in June 2010.

 
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Welcomat alumna Jennifer Baldino Bonett lives and writes in South Philadelphia. You can find her writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer and on her children’s homework.

 
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Peter Burwasser has been the classical music critic for the Philadelphia City Paper since 1981. He was also an editor and contributor for Philadelphia Music Makers, and he reviews recordings and videos for Fanfare Magazine. His other freelance writing activities have included CD program notes for the Music and Arts label, articles for the WRTI Radio Guide, articles for the annual report of the Philadelphia Music Project, and concert reviews for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Peter serves on the board of directors of the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia and the Presser Foundation, as well as the Wagner Free Institute of Science. He lives in Bella Vista, Philadelphia with his wife and two children.

 
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Judith E. Stein is an art writer and independent curator, a recipient of a Pew Foundation Fellowship in the Arts, in literary non-fiction, for her writings on art (1994).  Her publications in Art in America include a review of Judy Chicago’s first East Coast show (1973); features on Fred Wilson’s “Mining the Museum” (1993); Maya Lin (1994); the collaboration between John Ashbery and Jane Hammond (1995); Zoe Leonard (2001); and interviews with Jo Baer (2003), and Alfred Leslie (2009). 

An art history major at Barnard College (1965), Judith Stein earned her M.A. (1967) and Ph. D. (1981) in art history at the University of Pennsylvania.  She has taught at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University and the Maryland Institute College of Art. As curator of 20th Century art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, (1983-95), she organized 90 regional shows and national touring exhibitions, including “Red Grooms: A Retrospective, 1956-1984” (1985); “Figurative Fifties: New York Figurative Expressionism” (1988); and “I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippi"n (1994), which traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This latter received the 1995 Award for Best Catalogue from the International Art Critics Association, American Section.

For New York’s New Museum of Art, she co-curated “Picturing the Modern Amazon: The Hypermuscular Woman” (2000), co-edited its catalogue and wrote on women’s bodybuilding and performance art in the ‘80s. She curated “Jules Olitski, An Inside View: A Survey of Prints, 1954-2007” (2008), a traveling show; and “Cool Man in a Golden Age: Alfred Leslie’s Films, Books, and Installations, 1957-2009” for the Slought Foundation, Philadelphia, in 2009.

The postwar New York art world is an abiding interest. In 2008, her biography-in-progress of the New York art dealer Richard Bellamy (1927-1998) received a major Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital Arts Writers Book Grant. Her related articles include “Art’s Wager: Richard Artschwager and the New York Art World of the ‘60s,” The Reading Room (2002); “A Bond of Steel: di Suvero and Bellamy,” Art in America (2005); and “Richard Tuttle on Richard Bellamy and the ‘60s,” Sienese Shredder (2006). Related lectures include “Richard Bellamy and his Circle of Friends,” Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam (2001); “Stepping into History: Richard Bellamy and the Sculpture of the Sixties,” Seattle Art Museum, (2003); “The Dealer as Co-Conspirator: Selections from the Richard Bellamy Papers at MoMA,” The New School, (2008).

Among her honors are writing fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and writing residencies at the Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy, (1999); the Vermont Studio Center (2002); Blue Mountain Center for the Arts, (2005, 2008); the Millay Colony for the Arts, (2007); Ragdale (2009). She is represented by William Kingsland, Kuhn Projects, New York..

 
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Alaina Mabaso () is a free-lance writer who lives in Philadelphia. She holds a BA in theater from Arcadia University, and has worked on the theater scene as a writer and reviewer for the last couple years.

She blogs on a variety of subjects at alainamabaso.wordpress.com. “No fancy, controversial, pseudo-philosophical, snarky or catchy branding for Alaina Mabaso’s blog,:” she writes. “It’s not a mommy blog, a product blog, a tech blog, a theater blog or a celebrity blog. It’s just me and the things that tormented me yesterday but crack me up today. This is a life blog. Some of my friends labor on plays and novels. I admire them, but the things that actually happen are amusing enough.”

 
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Josette Bonafino is the founder and director of Culture Quest Tours (www.cqtours.com), an educational tour company that specializes in custom-tailored travel programs. She is also the co-founder and executive director of MYX: Multicultural Youth eXchange (www.myxworld.org), a nonprofit organization that uses the arts to help youth explore cultural diversity and social issues relevant to all people.

A native Philadelphian and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Josette is currently pursuing a Teaching Artists Certificate at the University of the Arts. She has previously been published in Language Magazine, Teach and Travel, Student Group Tour Magazine and Womensradio.com.

 
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Robert Murphy is a medical writer, guitarist and singer who has written and recorded two CDs. He contributed theater and pop music reviews to The News of Delaware County from 1985 to 1990 and to The Main Line Times from 1990 to 1996.

 
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J.F. Pirro, a nationally-recognized journalism and English teacher at Emmaus (Pa.) High School, is a widely-published and regarded writer. For the last 25 years, he’s written in nearly every journalistic genre, and has been published in 75-plus national and regional magazines as well as dozens of daily and weekly alternative city newspapers. He’s particularly interested in profiles, social trends, religion, historic preservation and 18th-Century America, agrarian culture, canine curiosities and sports and recreation topics.

Pirro, born in 1965, earned his bachelor of arts in English from Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pa. and his master of science degree in print journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Ill.  A Journalism Education Association Certified Journalism Educator (CJE), he’s also been on the summer-session faculty of Northwestern’s National High School Journalism Institute as well as the faculty of Penn State University’s Summer Journalism Workshop.

He has painstakingly restored a 1780 log and stone farmhouse and property in Quakertown, the heart of historic Upper Bucks County, Pennsylvania. There, he lives with two German Shorthaired Pointers, Braxton Brag Underwood (B.B.) and Miss Maudie Atkinson, as well as the saintly spirit of an English Chocolate Labrador, Dolphus Raymond. Each hound has been named after a character in To Kill a Mockingbird, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee that Pirro has taught throughout his career. He also raises Olde English Babydolls, descendant lambs of the original southdowns in Colonial America, and deals in baseball memorabilia, antiquarian books and early rustic, country antiques and furniture from his homestead and farm.

 
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J.T. Barbarese’s most recent book of poems is the The Black Beach (UNT, 2005). His poetry, translations and literary journalism have appeared widely. He teaches poetry and fiction in the MFA Program at Rutgers University’s Campus at Camden and is the editor of Story Quarterly. His web page is available at crab.rutgers.edu/~barbares.

 
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Anne Hamilton is the founder of Hamilton Dramaturgy, now located in Bucks County, Pa., and has worked in professional theater in New York, across the nation and the world since 1991. She is a Columbia University graduate and has worked with Lynn Nottage, Kathleen Chalfant, Andrei Serban, Michael Mayer, Leslie Lee and Classic Stage Company. She may be reached through www.hamiltonlit.com.

 
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I have worked on newspapers and literary journals for the past five years, both as a contributing writer and as an editor. In high school I wrote for the Bucks County Courier Times as a panelist for the teen section, “Reality,” and since my freshman year at Rider I have served as a writer and copy editor for the Rider News. I co-created and now head Rider’s first feminist literary journal, HerStory. My published work ranges from poetry to features articles, from opinion editorials to scholarly essays. 

 
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Small-McKinney’s second chapbook of poems, Clear Moon, Frost (Finishing Line Press, 2009) is available at Amazon and from Finishing Line Press.

Her first chapbook, Body of Surrender (Finishing Line, 2004) was showcased at Poet’s House in New York. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2004 and again in 2006.

Her work has appeared in various journals, including Wild River Review, The Cortland Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Fox Chase Review, upstreet, Mad Poets Review, and Blue Fifth Review.  She interviewed Pulitzer Prize poetry nominee Bruce Smith for the April 2006 issue of The Pedestal Magazine and was guest editor for its June 2006 issue. Her poem, Nigeria 2002, was awarded third place in the 2007 Philadelphia Eco Poetry Project. Small-McKinney also wrote, from time to time, essays for the Philadelphia Inquirer. In 1995, 11 years after a head injury, she was awarded a master’s degree in clinical neuropsychology from Drexel University. She is deeply grateful to be writing again.

 
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Marilyn MacGregor is an artist, art historian, teacher, and writer who has lived and worked on both coasts and in Europe. She’s written and illustrated ten published children’s books, taught art history and studio art in secondary schools, published limited-edition books, and exhibited her artwork in the U.S. and in England.

As a new resident of Philadelphia, she’s excited to discover the vibrant contemporary art scene in the city, as well as to become better acquainted with the great collections in Philadelphia museums.

She is the founder of ArtSmartTalk, an enterprise for independent art history classes and travel. Her non-fiction articles about art and culture have been published in regional and national magazines. Her drawing blog offers daily Hip Funny Cats with Big Ideas and a link to an online store, with part of the proceeds going to help animal rescue organizations.

She will teach a course in the history of children’s literature at Drexel University in summer 2010.

Contact Marilyn at .

 
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Julius graduated with a bachelor’s in English and a minor in theater from Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, where he was fortunate enough to preside over the student theater group and experience the excitement of collaborative arts.  He currently lives in exile in Bucks County and peers towards Philly for his next step forward.

Visit his blog at francesandjune.blogspot.com.

 
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Adam Lippe is a film critic as well as editor and publisher of the website “A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity.” He lives in the Germantown section of Philadelphia.

 
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John L. Erlich is emeritus professor of social work at California State University, Sacramento, as well as adjunct professor at Smith College School for Social Work. He played freshman and varsity basketball for Columbia University from 1955 to 1959, and has coached basketball “very part-time” at a settlement house and a children’s institution..

His past credits include:

Assistant director, program director, and executive director of urban renewal projects, New York City (1961-65).
Assistant/associate professor, University of Michigan School of Social Work (1965-73).
Professor, Division of Social Work, California State Universit, Sacramento (1973-2008).
Adjunct Professor, Smith School for Social Work (2005—present). 
Co-author/author/editor of 18 social work books and numerous articles and essays, with an emphasis on community work, diversity and social change.

 
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Mitchell Gordon is a free-lance writer and futurist who lives in Philadelphia. He is also vice president of the Philadelphia Area Space Alliance, which is the local chapter of the National Space Society. 

 
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After a false start in academia (Ph.D. in the sociology of religion from Drew University) and a detour through the rare book business, Judy ended up in magazine publishing. She worked for many years as an editor and creator of word puzzles (everything from crosswords to logic problems) and continues to test-solve the cryptic crosswords that run in Games and World of Puzzles. Her most recent full-time job was as editor-in-chief of a failed start-up, Garden Solutions. She’s free-lancing while waiting for the economy to improve.

Judy writes on gardening, education, sustainability, and other topics. Her interests include world music, dance, and the visual arts.

For more, visit judyweightman.wordpress.com.

 
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Matthew Jakubowski’s literary criticism appears regularly in the Philadelphia City Paper and the online magazine QuarterlyConversation.com. He has written reviews, essays and articles for The Brooklyn Rail, Grid magazine and Name Calling. He is an active member of the National Book Critics Circle and recently completed his second novel. He lives in West Philadelphia.

 
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Jeanne Wrobleski is an attorney who practices complex, commercial litigation. In addition to a law degree, she holds a master of arts degree. She has taught, lectured and been a president and a director and trustee of several civic and non-profit performing arts organizations, including The Wilma Theater and The Charlotte Cushman Foundation. Her full biography appears in Who’s Who in American Women, Who’s Who in American Lawyers and the Martindale-Hubbell Legal Directory. She lives and practices in Center City Philadelphia.

 
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Victor L. Schermer is a contributing editor to the the ”All About Jazz” website, a practicing psychologist in Philadelphia, and a free-lance writer on music, psychology, and other subjects. He lives in Center City.

 
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A.J. Sabatini is Arthur J. Sabatini. For decades I wrote and worked in the arts in Philadelphia. I taught at Drexel University and The University of the Arts, worked with Relâche and The Yellow Springs Institute, wrote for the Inquirer and a bunch of publications that are no longer around.

I live in both in Philadelphia and Arizona and am associate professor of performance studies in interdisciplinary arts and performance at Arizona State University. Most of my writing is academic and focuses on the avant-garde and experimental artists. I also perform, have written a play and keep working on other projects. Nearly everything I know can be traced to some conversation in or related to Philadelphia. More at: www.public.asu.edu/~ieajs/Welcome.html

 
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Jackie Atkins is a bi-state resident who spends her weekdays (Tuesday through Friday) in Philadelphia and her weekends (Friday night through Monday) in Cape May, New Jersey.

She has been the art critic for The Key to Philadelphia. Currently she writes for Seven Mile Island Publications and is a regular contributor to the Sea Isle Times and the Seven Miles News.

 
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Dr. Carol Rocamora is an educator, playwright, translator and critic.  Her three volumes of his complete translated dramatic works of Anton Chekhov have been published by Smith & Kraus. 

Her new play, I take your hand in mine...., based on the correspondence of Chekhov and Olga Knipper, premiered in September 2001 at the Almeida Theatre in London, starring Paul Scofield and Irene Worth, and opened in Paris in October 2003 at Peter Brook’s Theatre des Bouffes du Nord, under his direction, starring Michel Piccoli and Natasha Parry. 

Now in her 15th year of teaching at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Dr. Rocamora has been the recipient of the David Payne Carter Award for Teaching Excellence. She also lectures on theater at the Juilliard School, the Yale School of Drama and Columbia University. 

Formerly, she was the founder and artistic director of the Philadelphia Festival Plays at the Annenberg Center. Dr. Rocamora’s biography, Acts of Courage: Vaclav Havel’s Life in the Theatre, was published in 2005. 

She has written about theater for The Nation and The New York Times, and currently contributes to The Guardian and American Theatre. She has recently completed Rubles, a collection of original plays inspired by Chekhov’s short stories. She is currently working on a biography entitled Chekhov: Portraits.

 
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Marge Murray is a Philadelphia-based writer who is working on a book about Karin Larsson, the mother of modern Swedish design and the wife of Sweden’s most beloved painter, Carl.In the past she has specialized in scientific writing and editing, research, education and workshops, as well as academic writing for non-native speakers who wish to publisher their findings in English speaking journals. 

 
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I started out as a political aide, working as a legislative assistant to Senator Mark Hatfield, moved on as special assistant to Nancy Hanks, who was then chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Married a college professor, worked on my own Ph.D., which remains uncompleted, because we kept moving. My topic, which I still hope will be a book, is a ballet analysis of Degas’s work.

In Los Angeles someone read a small dance item I’d written. The Los Angeles Herald Examiner called and asked if I wanted to review for them, and I said yes. I found reviewing had the same immediacy as political work. You see something, you think about it, you write about it and move on, building a mental bank to draw on.

That led to the Santa Monica Evening Outlook, Long Beach Press Telegram, and, when we moved East, to the Philadelphia Inquirer (Weekend section), Philadelphia Daily News (dance critic) and on to PBS Applause, Seven Arts Magazine and Philadelphia City Paper .

My husband is a professor of folklore. We live a couple blocks out of Chestnut Hill in Laverock. .

 
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Bob Levin is an attorney and writer. His most recent book, Most Outrageous: The Trials and Trespasses of Dwaine Tinsley and Chster the Molester, was called “the most criminally neglected book of 2008” by Robot 6. He lives in Berkeley, California.
(Photo by Budd Shenkin.)

 
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Bob Ingram is a writer/journalist/editor whose work has appeared in Philadelphia Magazine, Atlantic City Magazine, South Jersey Magazine, the Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Weekly, Atlantic City Weekly, Philly Arts, the South Philadelphia Review, the Cape May County Herald, the Wildwood Sun By-the-Sea, the Drummer, the Plain Dealer, the Philadelphia Free Press, the South Street Star, Food Trade News, Food World, Supermarket Business, Progressive Grocer, and Frozen Food Age, among others.

He received the Philadelphia Bar Association’s “Scales of Justice” Award for a story on Juvenile Court, and an award from Sigma Delta Chi, the national journalism fraternity, for a story on Vietnamese refugees.

He has also co-written, co-produced and narrated a documentary film about the Boardwalk in Wildwood, NJ, called Boardwalk: Greetings from Wildwood By-The-Sea. 

He was managing editor of Chilton Company’s Marine Products Magazine, publisher of the Temple/Philadelphia Free Press, twice editor of The Drummer/Thursday’s Drummer/Distant Drummer, founder and editor of the South Street Star in Philadelphia, editor of Food Trade News, and senior editor at Supermarket Business and Progressive Grocer magazines.

He currently lives and writes in Burleigh, New Jersey.

 
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Pamela Riley is a retired theater director and professor of literature and drama.  Most recently she taught at Colorado College and the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in Old City, Philadelphia.

 
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Mark Wolverton is a free-lance science writer and playwright who has also published fiction.IHe is the author of three books, most recently A Life in Twilight:  The Final Years of J. Robert Oppenheimer. He has also worked in independent film, TV and radio. He lives in Bryn Mawr, Pa.

For more about Mark Wolverton, visit his website at www.markwolverton.com.

 
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Lynn Denton has been an artist, filmmaker and educator in Philadelphia for 37 years.

Her site-specific installations have been seen in solo exhibitions at the Morris Gallery of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Nexus Gallery in Philadelphia, and in exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art as well as other East Coast venues.  She has been awarded two residencies by the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, an Independence Foundation Fellowship, and in 2004 she was invited for a residency in Mojacar, Spain, by the Fundacion Valparaiso, which included painting and also filming the mosaics of Andalucia.  Lynn has also been awarded her second grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, founded by painter Lee Krasner, which suppports the work of artists in the U.S. and abroad. 

As a filmmaker Lynn has created five experimental and narrative fiction films that have been seen in festivals in recent years.  City Taxi, a hand painted Super-8 film, which screened at the Festival of Independents, is currently being shown in MIND TV’s 2009 “Philadelphia Stories” series. Her 16 mm. film Scumbling, a 35-minute dramatic narrative about a young woman who wants to become an artist, is scheduled to be shown on WHYY-TV in the program, “The Shape of Identity: Four Films by Women,” which she originally organized as a screening in Philadelphia. Her films have received funding from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Philadelphia Independent Film and Video Association. She served on the PIFVA Board of Directors for four years and is currently completing an original feature-length screenplay that she is developing as an independent film feature.

In recent years Lynn Denton has initiated collaborations with untrained artists and children to transform city environments.  In 2001 she worked with recovering addicts and neighborhood children in a North Philadelphia neighborhood to create their designs in a huge wall-sized mosaic and sculpture garden at 20th and Norris Streets.

She has orchestrated 12 additional large-scale tile/mosaic collaborative projects in public places in Philadelphia, including the Susquehanna/Dauphin Subway Station, Edward Heston School, Potter-Thomas School, and Fell School. The Heston School Project, under the auspices of the Mural Arts Program, is the largest mosaic community collaboration ever completed in Philadelphia.

Currently Lynn teaches “Introduction to Community Art” at Moore College of Art and Design, and she serves as an artist/teacher in the MFA Program of Vermont College. She dances Argentine tango, swing, salsa and Zydeco, and shares her life with her partner in Center City, where she is an advocate for maintaining a human-scale environment and rich quality of life.

 
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Michael Woods is a former newspaper reporter and magazine editor who lives in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia. Today he is an investment manager with Mount Airy Investment Partners, Inc.

 
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Bill Murphy is an arts and entertainment journalist. He was previously entertainment editor of the Main Line Times and editor of its arts supplement, Main Line Ticket. He lives in Havertown, Pa.

 
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Merilyn Jackson, a dance critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Pointe and Dance Magazine, also writes about food and Eastern European literature. She was awarded an NEA Critics Fellowship in 2005 and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for her novel-in-progress, O Solitary Host, in 1999. Her paper on dance criticism has been accepted for presentation at the Fourth International Conference on the Arts in Society, which will be held parallel to the Venice Biennale in July 2009. She says her interests will blend when she writes a novel about an anorexic Polish ballerina who gives up the stage to write a cookbook. She lives in South Philadelphia.

 
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Brett S. Harrison is a free-lance writer and aspiring screenwriter who lives in University City. He also makes a mean mushroom cheese omelette and feeds two (sometimes three) adorable, feisty stray cats who are pretty much his outside pets.

My main goal is to become a working screenwriter, though that has yet to happen. So far the highlight of my screenwriting career occurred in 2006, when I reached the finals of Philly Pitch, an annual event sponsored by the Philadelphia Film Commission, at which aspiring screenwriters pitch their ideas to a panel of industry pros in front of a packed room. It was a lot of fun and did yield me a request to send my script to one of the panelists. Nothing came of it. But “Hope is the thing with feathers,” as the Belle of Amherst once wrote.

When I’m not tilting at windmills, I write a weekly film review column for the South Philadelphia Review. This June it will have been eight years. I also write a monthly movie review for www.phatguru.com, a fashion site for “hip” young New Yorkers. I am neither hip, from New York, nor particularly young. But work is work. My work has also appeared in such disparate publications as Skope Magazine, The Chestnut Hill Local, The Spirit News and others.

I am grateful to Dan Rottenberg for giving me yet another forum for my ideas. He is to be applauded. Not that he would hear you, since you’re at your computer. But you get my meaning.

 
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Broad Street Review welcomes letters from readers, since dialogue is central to what we do. Our goal is to revive Benjamin Franklin’s old tradition of public letter-writing in digital form. This isn’t a blog: All letters are subject to editing by the editor, who functions as gatekeeper. But we have more space for and interest in letters than you’re likely to find in, say, the New Yorker or the New York Times. To submit a response to any article, click the response link at the bottom of the article, or simply click .

 
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Alan Richman is the longtime food and wine critic for GQ magazine and a native Philadelphian. A collection of his columns, Fork It Over: The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater, is now available in paperback (Harper Perennial, 2005). He is a Philadelphia native and formerly worked for the New York Times, Boston Globe, Montreal Star, Philadelphia Bulletin and People magazine. On two occasions, at the Daily Pennsylvanian and the Portland (Ind.) Commercial-Review, Dan Rottenberg was his boss. And now, with this submission to Broad Street Review, it happens again.

 
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     Journalist Dan Rottenberg has been the chief editor of seven publications, most recently broadstreetreview.com, a cultural arts website he launched in January 2006 with the support of the University of the Arts. He is also the author of ten books, most recently Death of a Gunfighter, published in October 2008 by Westholme Publlshing.

      His previous books include Finding Our Fathers, a guide to tracing Jewish ancestors (1977); Fight On, Pennsylvania, a college football history (1985); Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen, the history of a Philadelphia law firm (1988); Main Line Wasp, the memoirs of Philadelphia civic leader W. Thacher Longstreth (1990); Revolution on Wall Street, a chronicle of the securities industry (1993); Middletown Jews, an oral history of the Jews of Muncie, Indiana (1997); The Inheritor’s Handbook (1998); The Man Who Made Wall Street, a biography of Anthony Drexel (2001) and In the Kingdom of Coal, a narrative history of the U.S. coal industry as seen through the eyes of two families (Routledge, 2003).

      From 2000 to 2004 he was editor of Family Business, an international quarterly magazine dealing with family-owned companies, where he remains senior editor. From 1996 to 1998 he was editor of the Philadelphia Forum, a weekly Philadelphia opinion paper which he founded in 1996. In 1993 he created Seven Arts, a monthly magazine based in Philadelphia. From 1981 to 1993 he edited the Welcomat, a unique Philadelphia-based weekly opinion forum, now known as Philadelphia Weekly.

      He wrote an editorial-page column for the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1978 to 1997. He has written more than 300 articles for such magazines as Town & Country, Reader’s Digest, The New York Times Magazine, Forbes, Civilization, American Benefactor, TV Guide, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Chicago and many others. He served as a consultant in 1981 when Forbes launched its annual "Forbes 400" list of wealthiest Americans. His syndicated film commentaries appeared in monthly city magazines around the U.S. from 1971 to 1983.

      Earlier in his career he was executive editor of Philadelphia Magazine, managing editor of Chicago Journalism Review, a Wall Street Journal reporter, and editor of the Commercial-Review, a daily newspaper in Portland, Indiana.

      Dan Rottenberg is a native of New York City and a 1964 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, a piano teacher. Their two grown daughters live and work in New York City.

E-mail address:

 
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Dave Allen is a writer and musician who specializes in classical and contemporary music. He lives in Philadelphia and blogs at hotbedofintrigue.blogspot.com. He has written reviews and articles for the Courier-Post, the Bulletin, Phawker.com and the web-magazine NewMusicBox.com.

He has a background as a performer (trombone, tuba, choral singing with the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia), but “my love of music really comes from my concert-going experience: starting with punk shows in clubs in D.C. and in barns and grange halls in rural Maryland, and slowing morphing into orchestra, choir and chamber music concerts. I love classical music, but I tend to prefer newer, off-the-wall stuff to the standard classical repertoire.” He lives in Philadelphia.

I

 
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Gerald Weales is a drama specialist, a sometimes reviewer of theater (retired from Commonweal after 25 years), author or editor of a great many books, most of which are now out of print (last chance to buy Canned Goods as Caviar, which the University of Chicago Press is letting go out of print). He currently doing a yearly theater roundup for The Georgia Review. He graduated (A.B., M.A., Ph.D.) from Columbia so long ago that the trolleys were still running on upper Broadway when he began there. He lives in University City.

 
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Victoria Skelly has written/thought extensively on the crafting of environments that inspire creative endeavor. Her work experience includes organizational consulting for the research and development
division of a pharmaceutical company. She is a graduate of the Russell Ackoff-inspired “Organizational Dynamics” program at the University of Pennsyvania, which encourages a holistic rather than quanitative approach to solving leadership and organizational problems.

Victoria, who grew up in a family of artists, has indulged her lifelong love of art and literature by traveling to exhibits worldwide and reading extensively about what others have to say about it. She has participated in the art education program, “Art Goes to School,” and the docent programs at both the Barnes Foundation and the Woodmere Museum.

Victoria’s musings on the world of art in Philadelphia and beyond can be viewed at www.phillyartmuse.blogspot.com.

 
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    Tom Purdom is a science fiction writer and general freelance writer who has been writing about music ever since the opening of the 1988-89 season, when he became the classical music critic for a unique center city weekly called the Welcomat.  His musings on  the Philadelphia culture scene have been circulated by several local publications and two online services. 
   
    Purdom has written non-fiction about subjects as varied as arms control and interior decorating for magazines such as Kiwanis and American Education and institutional clients such as the University of Pennsylvania and the United States Air Force. 

    His science fiction credits include five novels, a 50-year string of highly praised shorter works, and translations into German, Chinese, Burmese, Russian, Czech, and other widely spoken tongues.  His most recent sci-fi story, a novella entitled “Bank Run” was originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and is currently available in Science Fiction, the Best of the Year, 2006 Edition, edited by Rich Horton. 

    His novelette Fossil Games, which was a finalist for the Hugo award presented by the annual World Science Fiction Convention, can be found  in  another recent anthology, Gordon Dozois’s  Supermen: Tales of the Post Human Future. 

    More information, and samples of Purdom’s work, can be found on his website.   An account of his metamorphosis into a music critic can be perused in Through Time and Space with Giacomo Casanova, the fourth chapter of the literary memoir he has been posting on his website.

 
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