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NWA Staff
The Neighborhood Writing Alliance (NWA) is run by a dedicated group of individuals with diverse backgrounds and wide-ranging interests. The staff is committed to individual empowerment and community building through the written word.
The Neighborhood Writing Alliance is always looking for energetic and engaging teachers, community-oriented writers, or neighborhood activists who are interested in doing community-based volunteer work. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. Applicants who fit our criteria will be contacted when the next Workshop Leader Training is scheduled. Thank you for your interest!
2013 NWA Volunteer Writing Workshop Leader Application
Sue Eleuterio
Interim Executive Director*
Interim Publisher, Journal of Ordinary Thought
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Susan Eleuterio is a folklorist, educator, consultant to non-profits, and activist. She has conducted fieldwork and research with cultural and ethnic groups across the United States in order to develop public and educational programming and materials (exhibits, performances, lesson plans, curriculum guides and festivals); professional development for teachers on creating curriculum based on the cultural communities of their schools and for folk, traditional and fine artists on developing school curriculum and residencies. She formerly served as the Director of Ethnic and Folk Arts, Literature and Presenters Programs for the Illinois Arts Council, as the Registrar and Collections Manager for the Museum of Science and Industry and as the Executive Director of GRANTS Inc. She is currently conducting research into glass ceiling stories and working on Beyond Illustration: Mexican and Irish American Dance Costume in the Midwest.
Eleuterio holds an MA in American Folk Culture from the Cooperstown Graduate Program (SUNY/Oneonta) and a BA in English/Education from the University of Delaware. Publications and essays include Irish American material culture, folk arts education in Missouri, glass ceiling stories, and the Irish in Chicago.
She has extensive experience in grants administration and review, and has served on grant review panels for the National Endowment for the Arts as well as for the Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota and New York State arts councils. She currently serves on the boards of the Chicago Grassroots Curriculum Task Force, the Crossroads Fund, and Planned Parenthood of Indiana.
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Hollen Reischer
Assistant Director
Editor, Journal of Ordinary Thought
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Hollen Reischer joined the NWA staff in February 2010. Before joining NWA, Hollen edited and wrote curriculum and communications for Orion’s Mind, an education company serving low-income students. At Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ), a national organization that engages people of faith in issues of workplace justice, she coauthored a book on immigration policy and ran the summer internship program for undergraduate students. She is an alumna of AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps, an organization engaging young people in direct service work that addresses the causes and effects of poverty in the United States. Hollen is a member of Duke University’s Center for Race Relations Alumni Association, through which she seeks to continue meaningful dialogue around issues of diversity and personal identity. In 2009, she organized an environmental awareness retreat for young adults in the Chicago area, and she is the winner of the 2008 Shinjo Ito Young Adult Art Contest. Hollen holds a BA in Psychology and a Certificate in Documentary Studies from Duke University. |
*After ten great years as the Executive Director of the Neighborhood Writing Alliance, Carrie Spitler resigned her post to pursue a new opportunity in the Chicago nonprofit community. Long-time NWA supporter, workshop leader and former board member Sue Eleuterio has stepped in as interim director as NWA takes a fresh look at how the organization has evolved since its founding more than 20 year ago, how we operate to deliver on our mission and our commitments to our writers, how we best leverage the talents of the staff, how we continue to deliver to and expand our audience during this transition.
Workshop Leaders
NWA is grateful for the dedicated group of workshop leaders who keep each of our workshops challenging, inspiring, reflective, and fun. Our talented workshop leaders come with a wide range of backgrounds, including artists, community activists, folklorists, and teachers
Carolyn Dennis-Roundtree
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Carolyn Dennis-Roundtree is a writer and editor whose professional work has been published and distributed by a national wire service, newspapers, magazines and newsletters. She also served as Marketing Director for Third World Press, the nation’s oldest black book publishing company. Carolyn’s creative work appears in “From Tragedy To Triumph: When Youth Fall And Get Back Up” by Brighter Path Publishing and the Odyssey Project’s publication “In Media Res.” She currently teaches Creative Writing at the Adult Writing Center – a collaboration of the Illinois Humanities Council, the Black Star Project and the AKA Foundation.
Carolyn holds a Bachelors of Arts in Journalism from Howard University and has completed graduate coursework in Fiction Writing and Literary Criticism at Chicago State University. More recently, she received college credits in the Humanities as an Odyssey Project graduate. She is a fellow of the Great Books Foundation, the DePaul University Vachel Pennenbaker Institute for Direct Marketing, Stanford University Book Publishing Institute and Howard University Book Publishing Institute.
Carolyn and her husband, Allen, live on Chicago’s south side. She is a classic movie buff and voracious reader. |
Glodean Champion
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Glodean Champion, writer, photographer and educator, holds a B.A. in English and an M.F.A.
in Writing. She currently teaches at Chicago State University. Her short stories and essays
have been published in Woman's Work, Hip Mama Magazine, Exposure, The Womanist, and
The Word. Her photography and graphic artwork have been featured in several Bay Area
galleries, as well as various art and film festivals. Relatively new to the Chicago area, Glodean is
redefining herself as an artist and educator and is working on completing her first novel, Salmon
Croquettes. |
Stavroula Harissis
Workshop Leader, Humboldt Park Branch Library
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Stavroula Harissis is writer and activist from the northwest suburbs of Chicago. After writing with the Albany Park branch of the Neighborhood Writing Alliance for the passed two years, Stavroula is
excited to transition into the role of workshop facilitator with the Daley Branch group. Her creative writing has been featured in the Journal of Ordinary Thought, AREA Chicago Magazine, Red Wedge Magazine and WBEZ Chicago Public Radio. As an active organizer in a number of different social justice campaigns, she has also written for the Socialist Worker and had interviews featured on Austin Hellenic Radio and in Chicago's Hyde Park Herald.
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Carla Jankowski
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Carla Gubitz Jankowski grew up on the Northwest Side. After 15 years as a
graphic designer, she turned to her first love-teaching. She taught high
school English and Journalism and now continues to lead workshops for
teachers through the Chicago Area Writing Project and Governor State
University. She holds a BA from the University of Illinois (Urbana) and MAT
from the University of Chicago. |
Chad Seader
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Chad Seader is excited to work with NWA as workshop leader at Saint Leonard's House. He is currently finishing his Master's degree in Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse from DePaul University, where he also teaches first-year writing. Chad's current research interest include community literacy and alternative rhetorics; transgression and epistemology; and contemporary rhetoric in Iran and the Middle East. He lives in Andersonville. |
Kristin Walters
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Kristin Walters has lived in Chicago for four years. Every day she falls further in love with the city and she looks forward to meeting more members of the writing community through her work with the NWA. At the beginning of her writing life she focused on fiction, but non-fiction and poetry have increasingly interested her and now have overtaken much of her time. When she’s not writing, Kristin runs, rides her bike and reads. Her guilty pleasures are watching movie trailers, eating all the strawberries and wearing flip-flops in the rain. |
Eric Warner
Workshop Leader, Budlong Woods Branch Library
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Eric Warner has been writing and performing in Chicago since 2006, creating 8 original theatrical performance works with the collaboration Nicholas and Warner, and his solo works have been in Lifeline Theatre’s 15th and 16th Annual Fillet of Solo Festival in Chicago, This Much is True, and the St. Louis Fringe Fest. Eric has taught writing, theatre, writing and art in many Chicago schools with Urban Gateways, Beacon Street Gallery and Casa Central.
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Maggie Bridger
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A dance artist, writer, and teaching artist, Maggie Bridger keeps busy with several different projects. She teaches dance in the Chicago Public School system through her work with Changing Worlds and works as a Program Facilitator with the Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana. Her choreographic work has been shown in several venues across the midwest, including the Drucker Center and Access Living here in Chicago. You can find her writing at Crohn's Chronicles, where she blogs about life with a chronic illness. Bridger received her BA in Dance from Columbia College Chicago. |
Valerie Wallace
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Valerie Wallace is an associate editor with RHINO Poetry and poetry editor for the Afghan Women Writers' Program. Her most recent published poems appear in Waccamaw, Potomac, Court Green, the Santa Clara Review, and Drumvoices Revue. Valerie holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has received an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award and the second place Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, and fellowships from Writers in the Heartland and Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She has been an annual judge for the Chicago Children's Haiku Festival since 2004 and leads poetry workshops for the Hyde Park Art Center. |
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