Madeleine Deininger and Joel Peterson

Madeleine “Mady” Deininger and her husband Joel Peterson established the Endowed Visiting Writers Series Fund to support academic programming at Stockton University. The Visiting Writers Series, sponsored by faculty members in the School of Arts and Humanities, brings some of the most innovative authors writing fiction, poetry and non-fiction to South Jersey to read from their work for public audiences at Stockton’s Galloway campus.

Deininger is the recipient of an Honorary Degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, from The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Greatly influenced by her time studying at Stockton with Professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Stephen Dunn, she and Peterson sponsor the annual Ravenswood Poetry Reading Series at Stockton University. All events except for the annual Ravenswood reading are free of charge and open to the general public. The second reading of the fall semester, the Ravenswood reading, is a fundraiser which enables the series in future years.

In addition, Deininger has been a member of Stockton’s Board of Trustees since 2007. She served as Chairperson of the Board and Executive Committee. She is the Founder and President of the Sonoma, California-based Kismet Wines, Inc. where she has developed a highly successful national marketing and sales program for California and European fine wines. Deininger is a 1980 alumna of Stockton State College, where she received her Baccalaureate in Liberal Studies. After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1985 with a master’s degree in Liberal Studies, she worked as a freelance photographer, writer and editor, and later co-founded a wine import and brokerage company based in Princeton, New Jersey. Furthermore, she is a general partner at Bedrock Vineyards, which supplies premium grapes to Ravenswood, Bedrock Wine Company, Turley, Carlisle, Biale, Robert Mondavi, Franciscan and Simi wineries in Sonoma and Napa counties.