PROFESSIONAL BIO

Dionne Custer Edwards is a writer and arts educator working in education programming at The Wexner Center for the Arts, where she created Pages, an arts and writing program. She also developed WorldView: Global Intersections in Contemporary Art and Call + Response, a program engaging arts and youth activism. Dionne’s interests include writing, literacy, and developing arts-integrated programming and interdisciplinary learning experiences.

She has partnered with many programs and organizations including Ohio Arts Council, Maroon Arts Group, Transit Arts, and Thurber House Writing Center—and served on nonprofit boards, including two school boards. She has received awards and fellowships for her work in the arts, and in 2014 and 2016 was nominated for a Greater Columbus Arts Council Community Arts Partnership award.

In conjunction with her work in the arts and education, she presented in Indianapolis, a TEDx talk titled:Beautiful Distractions in 21st Century Learning, and recently spoke in New Orleans at the National Art Education Association on her research and work with the Pages program.

For several years, she was a contributing writer for Alive, and most recently published an essay, translated in English and Turkish, Inside Outside: On Creative Practice and Arts Partnership in Sanat Dünyamiz (“Our Art World”). In 2015, she was featured on The Ohio Channel’s Book Notes, a series featuring writers living and working in Ohio. In 2017, she was commissioned to work with a small team of writers to pen an 80-page “choreopoem” for stage. She was commissioned to consult, develop, and write an arts curriculum for Artmobile, a local community arts program for underserved youth.

She has a BA in English, Ohio State University and MA in Creative Writing and Arts Education, Antioch University.

Contact Dionne Custer Edwards at:

dionnecuster@gmail.com  

@dcusteredwards (Twitter)