1. 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 Series
Fiction & Creative Nonfiction
In celebration of the
necessity, beauty and
power of the work
of women artists.
 

123 South Broad Street, Suite 2040
Philadelphia, PA 19109
215-545-4078
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

2. 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 Celebration
Tuesday, 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.
2003LeewayAwards
Friday, November 14
7:00pm
Philadelphia Art Alliance
251 South 18th Street
        :
Susan Abulhawa
Yvonne Chism-Peace
Molly Layton
Wednesday, November 19
6:30pm
Fleisher Art Memorial
709-721 Catharine Street
        :
Lorene Cary
Carol Towarnicky
Tuesday, December 2
7:00pm
Kelly Writers House
3805 Locust Walk
UPenn Campus
        :
Robin Black
Ilana Stanger-Ross
Sharon White
Wednesday, December 10
6:30pm
Rosenbach Museum & Library
2008-2010 Delancey Place
        :
Rachel Cantor
Gloria Klaiman
Susan 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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3. 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
Emerging Artist Award Recipient
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
Emerging Artist Award Recipient
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
2003Recipients
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2003Recipients
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Photo credt:
Joanna E. Morrissey

4. 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
Emerging Artist Award Recipient
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
Emerging Artist Award Recipient
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

5. 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
Emerging Artist Award Recipient
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
Emerging Artist Award Recipient
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
Emerging Artist Award Recipient
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

6. 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
Emerging Artist Award Recipient
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
Emerging Artist Award Recipient
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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