Panels of experts in their respective fields reviewed the works of approximately 175 applicants during this highly competitive process.  Panelists included:

Choreography
Rodger Blum is Associate Professor of Dance at Smith College and was ballet master/dancer for Carolina Ballet Theatre.  Dante Del Giudice is Assistant Professor and Interim Director of the Office of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions at Rhode Island College and has served as the director of dance at Rhode Island College from 1992-2001.  Neena Gulati founded the Triveni School of Dance (Brookline, Massachusetts) which is dedicated to the education and performance of Classical Indian dance. 

Fiction
Annecy Baez is the winner of the 2007 Miguel Marmol Prize and works as a clinical social worker.  Her fiction and poetry include experiences from this work.  Michael Lowenthal teaches creative writing in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University and has several published novels, stories and essays.  Jenefer Shute is a professor in the English Department of Hunter College in New York City, the author of four novels and the recipient of a 2001 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction Literature. 

Film
Jeannie Simms is a faculty member in the Photography Department at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.  Her work has been screened at several international film festivals.  Daniel Sousa teaches film, animation and video at Rhode Island School of Design.  He was awarded a Moving Image Fund production grant by the LEF Foundation.  Robert Todd is an experimental filmmaker, sound artist and an associate professor and Director of Media Productions at Emerson College.

Music Composition
Sarah Brindell is an assistant professor at Berklee College of Music where she teaches songwriting, music theory and arranging.  Jimmy Greene was a recipient of the 2005 Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism Artist Fellowship in Music Composition and currently teaches at the Hartt School and the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts.  Jairo Moreno is an associate professor of music at New York University and as a bassist, he has earned 5 Grammy nominations with Ray Barretto. 

Playwriting
John Emigh is a professor in the Theatre and English Departments at Brown University where he has been teaching and directing since 1967.  Sinan Unel was a Massachusetts Cultural Council 2007 finalist in Playwriting and has received the Calderwood Commission for New Plays, the New Century Writer Screenplay Award and the John Gassner Memorial Award.  Amanda Weir recently received her MFA from Brooklyn College and currently teaches at Wheaton College and works as an Arts Literacy instructor at the Central Falls School District in Rhode Island.

Poetry
Maria Luisa Arroyo was a recipient of a 2004 Massachusetts Cultural Council grant in poetry and  the Unsung Heroine Award from the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women.  Bruce Cohen was a recipient of the 2007 Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism Fellowship in Poetry and winner of the 2007 Orphic Prize.  He has two books of poetry forthcoming.  Beth Harrison is the Associate Director at the Academy of American Poets and has worked as an editor for several book publishers, including Princeton Architectural Press and Oxford University Press.

About Artist Fellowship Program
The Fellowship program awards grants on an alternating annual basis.  The categories listed above were recognized this year. In fiscal year 2010, the Commission on Culture & Tourism will offer Artist Fellowships in the categories of crafts, new media, painting, photography, works on paper and sculpture/installation. Guidelines and application forms will be available on the Commission’s Web site (www.cultureandtourism.org) in the summer of 2009. The tentative deadline is early September 2009.