Arts Experiences

Dakota Andersen: Andersen is a freelance choral and jazz musician in the Twin Cities. Most recently, he worked as an administrative specialist for Madeline Island Chamber Music, a program of MacPhail Center for Music, and as a choir teacher at Rockford Area Schools. Currently, he sings with the VocalEssence Ensemble Singers and the Minnesota Chorale. Andersen graduated from the University of North Texas (Denton, TX) with a MM in jazz studies and from the University of Northern Iowa (Cedar Falls, IA) with a BM in music education.; Crystal Boyd: Boyd is the senior manager of pollinator programs for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, where she manages an annual grant cycle that awards more than five million dollars per year. She is also the founder and president of Crystal Boyd Consulting, which provides project management and grant writing services for local organizations. Boyd earned her bachelor's degree in English and Spanish from the University of Minnesota, and her master's degree in museum studies from the University of Colorado.; Starrla Cray: Cray is a writer, teacher, journalist, and lifelong Minnesota resident. She graduated summa cum laude with a BA in mass communications in 2008, and spent 10 years working full-time as a reporter and editor before returning to school for her MFA in creative writing. Cray taught college writing classes for three years and she teaches youth creative writing through the Loft Literary Center. Cray is the founder of a writing group in McLeod County.; Sara Hathaway: Hathaway is a local painter and landscape artist. They are currently applying for grants to fund murals and prairie restoration on the north side of Minneapolis. Hathaway is an aspiring business owner, focused on prairie restoration.; Kjerstin Moody: Moody is an associate professor of Scandinavian studies at Gustavus Adolphus College, where she teaches courses on contemporary Nordic culture in English and Swedish. She also teaches courses through the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis. At Gustavus, she collaborates with colleagues to run its annual Out of Scandinavia Artist in Residence program, which brings a contemporary Nordic artist for a week-long stay on the Gustavus campus. Moody currently serves on the Prairie Lakes Regional Arts Council board and has served as a judge for the American Literary Translators Association and the Fulbright Institute of International Education program. ; Roseanne Pereira: Pereira is a writer living in Minneapolis. Her work has appeared in a variety of print, online, and on-air outlets, including Catapult, Minnesota Public Radio, and The Shanghai Literary Review. She served as a Kroc Fellow at National Public Radio and an Upper Midwest Human Rights Fellow at the Center for Victims of Torture. Pereira has been a two-time fellow at the Writers by Writers' Tomales Bay Workshop, a writer in residence at Hedgebrook, and a Tin House scholar. She is a graduate of Yale University (New Haven, CT) and has a MFA from Warren Wilson College (Swannanoa, NC).; Stephen Pittelkow: Pittelkow is a teaching artist in the areas of bookbinding, decorative paper, and alternative forms of printing. He has held positions in human resources, including public and private labor relations, mediation, and arbitration. He has also served for many years as program manager for an arts organization.; Ishwari Rajak: Rajak is an entrepreneur and author of a poetry book, Screams of a Goddess. She has been teaching how to cook food from her native country of Nepal for five years. She has more than 20 years of administrative and leadership experience working for international nonprofit organizations. She has a master's degree in gender and women's studies and a master's in nonprofit leadership.