Charles Donelan has lived in Santa Barbara since 2001. He writes about visual art, music, theater, and books for the Santa Barbara Independent, where he is the arts editor. Prior to his arrival in Santa Barbara, Donelan lived in New York City, where he earned his Ph. D. in English at Columbia University while pursuing his lively interest in New York’s wide variety of cultural offerings, from the Metropolitan Opera and the Museum of Modern Art to the Mudd Club. Donelan has at various times been employed as an elevator operator at the nightclub Danceteria, a visiting professor of Literature at Tufts University, the Director of New Media at the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, and an exercise rider for polo ponies in Millbrook, New York. He enjoys Santa Barbara’s extravagant ratio of cultural opportunities to minutes in the day, and looks forward to helping artbound become a leading source for great stories about the arts in Southern California.