Contributor Bios
Roldo Bartimole
Roldo Bartimole celebrates 50 years of news reporting this year. He published and wrote Point of View, a newsletter about Cleveland, for 32 years. He worked for the Plain Dealer and Wall Street Journal in the 1960s. He was a 2004 Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame recipient and won the national Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in 1991.
John Benson
Free-lance writer John Benson spends most of his time writing for various papers throughout Northeast Ohio. When he's not writing about music or entertainment, he can be found coaching his two boys in basketball, football and baseball or watching movies with his lovely wife, Maria. John also occasionally writes for CoolCleveland.com
Roy Berko
From Cool Cleveland contributor Roy Berko. Berko's blog, which contains theatre and dance reviews from 2001 through 2009, as well as his consulting and publications information, can be found at http://royberko.info. His reviews can also be found on NeOHIOpal and CoolCleveland.com.Roy Berko, who is a life-long Clevelander, is a Renaissance man. Believing the line in Robert Frost’s poem “Road Not Taken,” each time he comes to a fork in the road, he has taken the path less traveled. He holds degrees, thought the doctorate from Kent State, Univeristy of Michigan and The Pennsylvania State University. His present roles, besides husband and grandfather, are professor, crisis counselor, author and entertainment reviewer... Read Roy Berko's complete bio here
Jeff Biasella
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Jeff Biasella, a 24 year old creative writing/popular culture graduate of Bowling Green State University living the post-grad dream in the Warehouse District.David Budin
David Budin is a freelance writer and a folk and rock musician, whose folk group, Long Road, performs occasionally. He is a former editor of Northern Ohio Live and Cleveland Magazine. His writing focuses on the arts, and especially on pop culture and pop music history. He is currently working on two pop-music-related books.
Julie Cajigas
Julie Cajigas is a Cleveland girl who grew up on the East & West Side and now lives near Akron – she’s got the whole town covered! Cajigas holds degrees in Communication & Music from Cleveland State University and is currently pursuing her Masters in Communication at CSU. She is a professional freelance writer who occasionally writes in her blog in between gigs at http://www.inspiredfreelancer.com. Cajigas is also an avid musician and can be seen performing with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and as a violinist in the Allison Bencar band, http://www.myspace.com/allisonbencar.Lee Chilcote
From Cool Cleveland contributor Lee Chilcote. Chilcote works for Progressive Urban Real Estate and the Shaker Square Area Development Corporation. He is also a freelance writer. Chilcote lives in the EcoVillage Townhomes in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood, close to the Oddfellows building on Lorain, with his wife Katherine and daughter Emily.
Greg Cielec
Greg Cielec is a local writer who covers mostly music and sports for a variety of publications and websites. He is also a full time English and creative writing teacher at Streetsboro High School; an adjunct professor at BGSU Firelands College and Lakeland Community College; and a football coach at John Carroll University. He has published two books of fiction, My Cleveland Story (1998) and Home and Away Games (2006), and the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Michael Heaton has called him “the Mark Twain of Cleveland.” Check out his website and blog at http://www.GregCielec.com.
Diane DiPiero
Diane DiPiero is always on the lookout for interesting people and organizations that make Cleveland great. Her work has appeared in the Plain Dealer, Cleveland Magazine, Cleveland Business Connects, Crain's Cleveland Business and other local and national publications. Diane recently started Brand It Write, a company that creates web content, newsletters, press releases and other written communications materials for small businesses. A native of Youngstown, she blogs about the Cleveland and Youngstown areas at http://www.asiwaswriting.blogspot.com. Diane is a mother of three and is writing a novel in her precious spare time.Carol Drummond
Carol Drummond has been a professional designer for 25 years. Prior to starting her award-winning graphic design studio 15 years ago, Drummond Design, she graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, worked at a graphic design studio, a video production company, and a consumer products company. She has been an art docent for Mayfield City Schools and currently serves on the COSE Arts Network Advisory Committee. http://www.DrummonDesign.comKelly Ferjutz
From Cool Cleveland contributor Kelly Ferjutz, who writes: My most recently published book is Ardenwycke Unveiled (e-book and trade paper). Cerridwen has another contemporary romance from me, But Not For Love, currently available only as an e-book, but perhaps will be in print next year. I hope to soon get around to completing some of the 30+ incomplete books in my computer! By the way, Cerridwen has also accepted two of my short stories in their Scintillating Samples (complimentary reads) area: Song of the Swan and Unexpected Comfort. I love photography as well, as you can see here. But over and above everything else, there's always been the writing. I can't imagine my life without it.
Mansfield Frazier
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier's From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.frombehindthewall.com.Elsa Johnson & Victor Lucas
From Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas. Elsa and Vic are both longtime Clevelanders. Elsa is a landscape designer. She studied ballet as an avocation for 2 decades. Vic has been a dancer and dance teacher for most of his working life, performing in a number of dance companies in NYC and Cleveland. They write about dance as a way to learn more and keep in touch with the dance community. E-mail them at vicnelsaATearthlink.net.Laura Kennelly
Laura Kennelly is a freelance arts journalist, a member of the Music Critics Association of North America, and an associate editor of BACH, a scholarly journal devoted to J. S. Bach and his circle. Listening to and learning more about music has been a life-long passion. She knows there’s no better place to do that than the Cleveland area.
Douglas O'Bryon
Douglas O’Bryon's sanguine Soundbite Laureate moniker paints a poetic self-portrait of this adult prodigy, who enjoys nothing more than pitting man versus metaphor in a continuing fight for justice from his vantage point high above Strongsville’s suburban Serengeti. Author and artist, bodybuilder and businessman, cereal entrepreneur and everyman, soccer Dad and MBA grad, he is a realist, idealist, and surrealist, who considers his job done when he has blended high tech with high touch into an easy to swallow Digital Casserole, which is, ironically, also the name of his blog. He is currently working his new novel, a sequel to The Titanic.
Susan Petrone
When Cool Cleveland contributor Susan Petrone is not writing an arts or culture article for Cool Cleveland, she writes fiction. Her first novel, A Body at Rest, was published in early 2009 by Drinian Press. An excerpt from the novel and some of her published short fiction are available at http://www.SusanPetrone.com.Susan Schaul
From Cool Cleveland contributor Susan Schaul, who says the act of writing is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. The challenge lies in getting the pieces to fit together and make sense.Alex Sukhoy
Alex Sukhoy, a globally-networked creative and business professional with nearly 20 years of corporate management experience, holds a B.A. degree in Communication from DePaul University in Chicago and an M.B.A. in Marketing and Strategy from the University of Rochester, Simon School of Business. Founder and manager of http://MBAhobo.com, a career consulting firm, and Creative Cadence LLC, a content and business development company, Alex has guest-lectured at numerous local organizations, including CSU and John Carroll's Boler School of Business, and also teaches screenwriting and preproduction at Tri-C. In 2006, she was profiled in BusinessWeek.com. Since first moving to Cleveland in 2003, she's made this city her home, and even wrote a song and a screenplay about it.
Claudia Taller
From Cool Cleveland contributor Claudia Taller, whose passion for words has led to creation of the Lakeside Word Lover’s Retreats, an outgrowth of her work with Skyline Writers. Her favorite foods are red wine, salmon, ice cream, and chocolate. She loves to read, write, tour wineries, ride her bike, ease into yoga, and cook gourmet meals for friends. Find her at http://www.claudiatallermusings.blogspot.com.Sarah Valek
Cool Cleveland events editor Sarah Valek graduated from Ithaca College with a double-major in arts and writing. After graduation, she came back to her beloved city and served as an AmeriCorps*VISTA with the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless. She currently spends her days chasing after her toddler-age son, drinking soy lattes and digging up the coolest events around town.Carlo Wolff
South Euclid free-lance writer Carlo Wolff writes about the hotel industry for Lodging Hospitality, Asian Hospitality and Hotelnewsnow.com. He also contributes book reviews to the St. Petersburg Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Boston Globe, where he regularly surveys graphic novels. He also is the author of Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories (Gray & Co.), and writes occasionally for CoolCleveland.com.Bob Yanega
Bob Yanega is a freelance writer, speaker, fountain of ideas, and renaissance man. He also still occasionally publishes his e-newsletter Bobsense, and spends a disproportionate amount of time inline skating and tinkering with various eco-friendly home projects. A lifelong Clevelander and unofficial Cleveland ambassador, Bob promises that he will actually publish his book someday which he says will “transform the way people in Cleveland think about Cleveland”. His website is http://www.BobSense.com.
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