Solange De Santis brings a lively, authoritative voice and great versatility to coverage of the arts. She has written about off-Broadway theatres and Shakespeare at Stratford, opera and rock, dance, literature, museums and film. She has interviewed Robertson Davies, John Huston, B.B. King and the last three artistic directors of the Stratford Festival, among others.

De Santis earned a master’s degree at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor’s degree in English at Barnard College in New York City.

She began her career with NBC Radio in New York as a news writer, then moved to the Associated Press broadcast wire as a news writer. She originated a music column called “Backstage Pass” for the AP radio wire. Eager for newspaper experience, she moved to West Palm Beach, Florida for a position as business writer at the Palm Beach Post. On a freelance basis, she wrote about the technical side of film for Shooting Commercials magazine.

Subsequently, she was a correspondent in the Los Angeles bureau for Reuters, where her coverage included the Academy Awards and the film industry. After three years, she was promoted to News Editor in Toronto, supervising seven reporters and two photographers. Her arts features at this time included the National Ballet of Canada, the Shaw Festival, the Stratford Festival and the Who’s farewell tour.

She went undercover to chronicle life in a doomed General Motors plant, an experience recorded in Life On The Line: One Woman’s Tale Of Work, Sweat And Survival, published in 1999 by Doubleday in Canada and the United States. In 2000, it was named a finalist for Canada’s National Business Book Award.

Most recently, she was a staff reporter for five years in the Toronto bureau of The Wall Street Journal, becoming the only Canada-based reporter to contribute regularly to the arts section. Her features covered the International Festival of Authors, tenor Ben Heppner, the Bata Shoe Museum, the National Film Board, the musicals Ragtime and Jane Eyre, Stratford and the Tafelmusik baroque orchestra.

She is now a freelance writer, contributing to The Wall Street Journal, enRoute magazine, Scarlett, the Anglican Journal, American Theater Magazine, Stage Directions magazine, the Canadian Society of Cinematographers’ magazine (CSC News), the National Post Business Magazine and the Globe and Mail.

She is also involved with theatre on the community level, having worked as a stage manager for the Milton Players in Milton, Ontario and director, assistant stage manager, script researcher, sound designer and properties master for the Burl-Oak Theatre Group in Oakville, Ontario. She wrote a one-act youth play for Grace Anglican Church in Milton. She has also studied directing, sound design, stage management, lighting and acting in continuing education courses at Ryerson University and with various theatrical professionals.