People

Alisa R. Drayton is the executive director of the Yawkey Club of Roxbury.   Drayton is a life-long learner, holding a B.S. degree from Lincoln University, a M.S. degree from the New School for Social Research and a J.D. from Boston College. She joins BGCB after dedicating her life’s work toward providing financial and operational leadership to community development organizations.

Alisa Solomon teaches at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where she directs the MA concentration in Arts and Culture. A long-time dramaturg, theater critic, and political and cultural journalist, she has written, among other places, for the Nation, New York Times, GuardianAmerica.com, WNYC radio, the Forward, American Theater, nextbook.org, killingthebuddha.com, and the Village Voice, where she was on the staff for 21 years, covering such subjects as theater, immigration policy, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, electoral politics, and women's sports. She is a contributor to the weekly WBAI radio program, Beyond the Pale: Jewish Culture and Politics and she is the author of Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender, winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, and co-editor (with Tony Kushner) of Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. As a dramaturg, Alisa's most recent project was working with Anna Deavere Smith on Let Me Down Easy.

Councilor Alison Austin represents the Ward of St. Thomas’ and has served the Borough of Boston since March 2007 during which time she also served as mayor. Her current term of office also ends February 2019. Ms. Austin also serves as a Governor of the Boston Grammar School Foundation. The Boston Grammar school served as a model for the Boston Latin School in Boston, MA.

Alison Byerly is provost and executive vice president as well as professor of English at Middlebury College. During a leave year spent as a visiting scholar at Stanford University in 2008-09, she completed a book manuscript, Are We There Yet? Virtual Travel and Victorian Realism.

Alison Frazee is the Director of Advocacy and an Outreach Coordinator at the Boston Preservation Alliance.

Author of "The Gardener and the Carpenter."

Alison Kuznitz is a reporter for State House News Service, a Massachusetts wire service that’s offered accounts on the activities of state government since 1894.

Alison Weir is a British historian and *New York Times* bestselling author. Her works include the novels *Innocent Traitor*, *The Lady Elizabeth*, and and several historical biographies, including *Mistress of the Monarchy*, *Queen Isabella*, *Henry VIII*, *Eleanor of Aquitaine*, *The Life of Elizabeth I*, and *The Six Wives of Henry VIII*.

Alissa Cardone joined the Conservatory in 2013 and is an associate professor of dance. She teaches the courses Modern Technique, Experiential Anatomy, Introduction to Dance, and Dance on Film & Video.

A specialist in British literature of the nineteenth century, MacLeod taught English for three years at the University of Indiana before accepting a post in 1969 at the University of Windsor where he remains a professor of English and Creative Writing to this day. What is most amazing about the career of Alistair MacLeod is that his great critical reputation stems from a mere 14 short stories, collected in *The Lost Salt Gift of Blood* (1976) and A*s Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories* (1986). In 1999, he published his first novel, *No Great Mischief*, which follows the lives of several generations of a family that emigrates from Scotland to Cape Breton. Written over the course of 13 years, *No Great Mischief* was published to great critical acclaim and is already in the process of being translated into a number of different languages. Nominated for all of Canada's major literary awards, the novel was awarded the Trillium Prize. The success of *No Great Mischief* was followed in 2000 by *Island*.