Faculty
Writers in Residence
Elizabeth Cohen. A weekly columnist and feature reporter for the Press & Sun Bulletin of Binghamton, New York; former staff member of the New York Post, and former news clerk for the New York Times. Ms. Cohen's journalism and essays have appeared in many magazines and papers, including Rolling Stone, Newsweek, and the New York Times Magazine, to name a few. She is the author of a memoir of her winter spent caring for her seriously ill father and her infant daughter, alone, The House on Beartown Road (Random House, 2003), which was selected as New York Times' Notable Book of 2003 and was also published in the United Kingdom and Japan.
Paola Corso. A New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in 2003, Ms. Corso's story collection Giovanna's 86 Circles (Terrace Books, 2005) and book of poems Death by Renaissance (Bottom Dog Press, 2004) are both set in her native Pittsburgh. She has worked as a grants writer and publications editor for non-profits such as the National Endowment for the Arts WritersCorps and is the fiction and poetry editor for an upcoming issue of the International Feminist Journal of Politics. She teaches creative writing in New York City.
Dan Pope. Author of In the Cherry Tree (Picador, 2003.) His stories have been published recently in Crazyhorse, Postroad, Iowa Review, and numerous other magazines. Mr Pope is a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, where he attended on a Truman Capote Fellowship. He is a winner of the Glenn Schaeffer Award from the International Institute of Modern Letters, and a grant in fiction from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts.
Daniel Asa Rose. Author of Hiding Places: A Father and his Sons Retrace Their Family's Escape from the Holocaust (Simon & Schuster, 2000) and Flipping for It (St. Martin's Press, 1987). Currently the book review editor for The New York Observer, he has served as arts & culture editor of the Forward newspaper, travel columnist for Esquire, humor writer for GQ, and essayist for The New York Times Magazine.
Don Snyder. Author of five novels, two memoirs, and a biography (Alfred A. Knopf, Little Brown; Doubleday; Simon & Schuster) and the 2003 Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas movie, "Fallen Angel," which was the highest rated TV movie of the year. He is a former newspaper editor, a former teaching-writing Fellow at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and a James Michener Fellow. He is the founder and director of a retreat in Canada for writers and writing faculty.
Mark Sundeen. Author of The Making of Toro (Simon & Schuster, 2003) and Car Camping (HarperCollins, 2000). His work appears in Outside, Men's Journal, National Geographic Adventure, Preservation, and the New York Times Magazine. He also worked as a web writer and editor for Howard Dean's presidential campaign.
Permanent Faculty
John P. Briggs. Professor in the Department of English Language, Comparative Literature, and Writing at Western. He is the fiction editor of Connecticut Review, and author of several notable books on chaos theory. He is one of three CSU professors named at Western.
Brian Clements, MFA Coordinator. Author of Essays Against Ruin, Flesh and Wood, and Burn Whatever Will Burn: A Book of Common Rituals (all poetry) and editor of Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics. Prof. Clements also has a rich background in technical writing and editing, marketing, and corporate communications.
Oscar De Los Santos. Associate Professor in the Department of English Language, Comparative Literature, and Writing at Western. Professor De Los Santos is the author of Hard Boiled Egg (Fine Tooth Press, 2004) and Infinite Wonderlands (Fine Tooth Press, 2006.) He is Co-Director of English Graduate Studies.
Edward Hagan. Professor in the Department of English Language, Comparative Literature, and Writing at Western. His teaching covers a wide range of 19th and 20th century Irish, British, and American literature as well as all levels of writing courses. His recent work includes a 2004 edition of The Green Republic (University College Dublin Press, 2004).
Shouhua Qi. Associate Professor in the Department of English Language, Comparative Literature, and Writing at Western, Qi has published extensively both in the United States and in China. He is the author of Bridging the Pacific: Searching for Cross-Cultural Understanding between the United States and China and more than ten other books. His debut novel, When the Purple Mountain Burns (San Francisco: The Long River Press, 2005), is about the tragic events that happened during the Rape of Nanking (his hometown) in the winter of 1937-38.
James R. Scrimgeour. Professor in the Department of English Language, Comparative Literature, and Writing at Western. He has published a critical biography of Sean O'Casey, seven books of poetry, and over 200 poems in anthologies and periodicals.
Abbey Zink. Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language, Comparative Literature, and Writing at Western. A past editor of a several newspapers, Zink's freelance work has appeared in New Business Opportunities and Crain's Chicago Business. She co-authored the introduction to the reissue of Campaigns of Curiosity: The Journalistic Adventures of an American Girl in Late Victorian London (U of Wisconsin, 2003).
Writing Mentors
Humera Afridi. A fiction and non-fiction writer who has contributed essays, articles, and reviews to such publications as The New York Times and Women's Feature Service; and whose fiction appears in anthologies such as And the World Changed. Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women (Women Unlimited Press, 2005) and 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11 (New York University Press, 2002), among others. Ms. Afridi has recently been awarded a fellowship by her alma mater, Mount Holyoke College, to implement a pilot arts-in-education program in a school destroyed by the devastating earthquake in Pakistan.
Joe Ahearn. A successful professional writer with more than 20 years of experience in writing for a number of Fortune 100 companies. Mr. Ahearn has written hundreds of technical and commercial publications, and produced a wide range of marketing materials. More recently, he has been heavily involved with web-based communications, producing a wide variety of commercial websites. In addition to his professional work, Mr Ahearn has published poetry, translations, and essays in leading magazines and journals around the country, including his latest book of poetry, Five Fictions (Sulphur River Review Press, 2003).
Lionel Bascom. A veteran writer and journalist with 25 years as a working newsman for various mainstream media outlets, including The New York Times, United Press International, and Money Magazine, to name a few. Mr. Bascom has worked in radio broadcasting, taught college-level journalism for 15 years, and published nine books of non-fiction including A Renaissance in Harlem: The Voices of a Lost American Community (HarperTrade, 2001).
Roger Boylan. Mr. Boylan's roots are in Ireland and the greater New York area. After attending the University of Ulster and the University of Edinburgh, he worked as a translator, computer technician, teacher, bartender, and book editor and traveled widely throughout Europe, North Africa and North America. Author of Killoyle (Dalkey Archive Press,1997), and The Great Pint-Pulling Olympiad (Grove Press, 2003), his stories and articles have appeared in various journals, including The Literary Review and The Texas Observer. He is a regular contributor to Boston Review's New Fiction Forum.
Brian Brennan. Mr. Brennan has published stories and essays in Mississippi Review, Quarry West, Sentence, and elsewhere. He has taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Chatham College, and State University of New York at Binghamton. He currently teaches at Cape Henry Collegiate School.
Sean McLain Brown. A poet and writer of fiction, Mr. Brown's work can be seen in such publications as Sentence, EM, Indiana Review, and First Intensity and most recently in "Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace," (Koa Books) edited by Maxine Hong Kingston. He is the recipient of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's 2006 Barbara Mandigo Peace Poetry Prize for first place. In addition to working as Public Affairs Director for a major-market radio station on the west coast, Sean teaches college-level writing, and leads writing retreats for American veterans and their families. Mr. Brown's first book, Manufacturer's Specifications and Guidelines, is forthcoming from Blue Barnhouse Press.
Louisa Burns-Bisogno. An award-winning screenwriter, director, author, and international consultant with over 100 on-screen credits. Her movies of the week have been produced on cable t.v. and on all the major U.S. networks, as well as distributed internationally. Among these specials are: My Body, My Child with Vanessa Redgrave; Bridge to Silence, with Marlee Matlin and Lee Remick; and Nobody's Child, which netted an Emmy for Marlo Thomas.
Richard Cass. Author of the story collection, Gleam of Bone, (North Coast Press, 2005) and two books of poetry, Mr. Cass has won prizes for his short fiction from Redbook and Playboy magazines and the Pacific Northwest Writers' Conference. He has also been an Individual Artist's Fellow for the state of New Hampshire. One of his short stories will appear in the anthology Best American Stories of the West in spring 2007. He lives in Brookfield, Connecticut, where he writes, teaches writing, and practices his double-haul.
Rita Ciresi. The author of two award-winning short-story collections, Mother Rocket (Dell, 2002) and Sometimes I Dream in Italian (Dell, 2001); and three novels, Blue Italian (Dell, 1997), Pink Slip (Delacourt, 1999), and Remind me Again Why I Married You (Dell, 2003.) She is director of creative writing at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
Joseph Conlin. Editor and publisher of the quarterly literary magazine SNReview. His fiction has appeared in such publications as The Fairfield Review and Hob-Nob. Prior to returning to fiction and teaching college English, Mr. Conlin spent two decades writing for and editing business publications. He also freelances for several business magazines.
Leslie Dallas. Screenwriter, story editor and poet. She has been awarded the Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award, the Disney Fellowship and the Jack Nicholson Prize in Screenwriting. Her work has been staged at the Newport Beach Film Festival and the Austin Heart of Film Festival. She is a graduate of the prestigious UCLA MFA program in Screenwriting, and has worked on numerous projects in television and for the studios. Her poetry and writing have appeared in The LA Times and The Pacific Review and CT Review. After living several lifetimes in Los Angeles, she was recently reincarnated in Connecticut.
Jeff Davis. Author of the nonfiction book, The Journey from the Center to the Page (Penguin, 2004) and the poetry collection City Reservoir (Barnburner, 1998), his features appear in magazines such as Enlightened Practice and Conscious Choice, and his poetry has appeared in numerous publications such as Sentence and the Comstock Review. The managing editor of Wildlife Watch Binocular and editor of the e-zine, WonderWritings, he is also founder of CenterToPage Workshops with annual retreats in Woodstock, NY and Taos and host and co-producer of the podcast radio show of literary arts & issues, SolWave. He has taught creative nonfiction at Southern Methodist University and currently teaches at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
John Dennis. A filmmaker and playwright with over 100 films, plays, and musicals to his credit. His most recent musical, Jacob's Folly, premiered at Maine Center for the Arts in 2002. He has written stories, articles, and poems for children's encyclopedias. Much of Mr. Dennis' work focuses on the concepts of a more humanistic consumer model and a more humanistic society. Two prime examples of this focus are Woolly, a children's feature film about endangered species, and his latest work-in-progress: an online, interactive, 3-D animated children's store.
Kass Fleisher. Author of The Bear River Massacre and the Making of History (SUNY Press, 2004); Accidental Species: A Reproduction (Chax Press, 2005); The Adventurous (forthcoming from Factory School in 2006); and Talking out of School: Memoir of an Educated Woman (forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press in 2007). Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Mandorla, and Notre Dame Review, to name a few. Her fiction has been awarded annual prizes from The Dickinson Review and Plainswoman. With her partner Joe Amato, she wrote Bear River and Yellow Medicine, screenplays that achieved semi-final status in the most recent Chesterfield Writer's Film Project (Paramount Studios) and in the current Nicholl Fellowship competition (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.) She is an Assistant Professor of English at Illinois State University, in Normal, and an Executive Editor of the American Book Review.
Gloria Frym. The author of two critically acclaimed collections of short stories: Distance No Object (City Lights Books, 2004) and How I Learned (Coffee House Press, 1992.) Her book, Homeless at Home (Creative Arts Books Company, 2001) won an American Book Award in 2002. Her most recent book of poems is Solution Simulacra (United Artists Books, 2006.) She has published numerous essays, articles, and reviews in such periodicals as San Francisco Chronicle, the Baltimore Sun, and Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics. She currently teaches fiction writing, international literature and poetry at the California College of the Arts.
Arnold Kane. A long-time writer/producer for television: half-hour comedies, such as Alice, and One Day at a Time;long form dramas; and variety shows, such as The Jim Nabors Variety Hour, with 4 Emmy nominations to his credit. Mr. Kane has written two plays, the first, Sharing a Life, won the 2000 Playwright's Circle Award. His book, If the South Rises Again It'll be Over my Dead Body (Trade Paperback, 2000) is a humorous account of a Yankee attempting to live below the Mason-Dixon line.
James Lomuscio. Award-winning journalist with more than 28 years experience as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor for The New York Times and various other local publications. Mr. Lomuscio is also the author of Village of the Dammed: The Fight for Open Space and the Flooding of a Connecticut Town, scheduled for a July 2005 release from the University Press of New England.
Victoria Ludwin. A fiction writer and essayist, she has published fiction, essays and reviews in such magazines as BOMB, City, Riotgrrl, and Artcritical. She has written award-winning advertising campaigns for IBM and for Better Homes and Gardens. In the past, Ms. Ludwin taught writing at The New School and served as director of marketing and circulation at the arts/culture quarterly, BOMB, where she is currently a contributing editor.
Pooja Makhijani. Author of the children's book, Mama's Saris (Little, Brown & Co, 2006) and editor of Under her Skin: How Girls Experience Race in America (Avalon Publishing Group, 2004), an anthology of essays by women that explore the complex ways in which race shapes American lives and families. Her bylines have appeared in the New York Times, The Village Voice, and India Today, among others. Ms. Makhijani currently serves as the associate editor at Weekly Reader Magazine, a current events magazine widely used in elementary schools across the country to supplement the standard curriculum.
Kyle Minor. A professional playwright and theater critic/feature writer whose works have appeared frequently in the New York Times and the New Haven Register, to name a few. Mr Minor is a full-time instructor of English and Communications at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, in addition to serving as the director/producer of the mainstage productions, and teaching various writing and playwriting courses in other low-residency programs.
Mark Misercola. A communications strategist and a former speechwriter for senior executives of such top corporations as IBM, Nynex, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. He is currently Regional Director for Internal Communications for Deutsche Bank in New York as well as an adjunct professor of advertising and public relations. Mr. Misercola's first novel, a suspense thriller, is Death to the Centurion (Twilight Times Books, 2004.)
Kristin Nord. A newspaper columnist and feature writer, Ms. Nord has worked for daily and weekly newspapers and continues to write for a number of regional and national magazines in such areas as business, health, the arts, humor, and entertainment. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and in Yankee and Connecticut magazines, as well as in a number of specialty publications such as New Choices and Family Therapy Networker. She currently teaches writing at the college level.
Lou Orfanella. A New York based teacher, writer, and workshop facilitator who has also worked as a broadcast and print journalist, he is the author of Scenes from an Ordinary Life: Getting Naked to Explore a Writer's Process and Possibilities (Trade Paperback, 2005) and several poetry collections, including his most recent, Allurements and Lamentations (Fine Tooth Press, 2006.) He contributed a chapter to the book, Rationales for Teaching Young Adult Literature (Calendar Islands Publishers, 1999), and has published over 100 articles, essays, columns, reviews and poems in numerous regional and national magazines, newspapers, and journals.
Charles Rafferty. Has published four full-length collections of poetry — The Man on the Tower (University of Arkansas Press, 1995), Where the Glories of April Lead (Mitki/Mitki Press, 2001), During the Beauty Shortage (M2 Press, 2005), and A Less Fabulous Infinity (Louisiana Literature Press, 2006). His poems have appeared widely, including American Poetry: The Next Generation, an anthology from Carnegie Mellon University Press, and Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets, an anthology from the University of Evansville Press. He has received a grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. He lives with his wife and daughters in Connecticut.
David Rich. David Rich wrote the feature film Renegades, starring Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Philips, and worked on the scripts of numerous other films for which he received a multitude of pats on the back in lieu of credit. For television, he wrote episodes of MacGyver, Legend, and StarGate - SG1. David sat on the other side of the desk as Vice President of Development for George Englund Productions, based at Warner Brothers. He has also written three plays.
Ron Samul. Publisher of international e-zine Miranda Literary Magazine. He writes for Inquiring News in Hartford, Connecticut, reviews books for Library Journal, and is the founder of Northeast Boxing News. A professional tutor and creative writing mentor who also instructs in new media and electronic publishing; as well as managing electronic media for a collection of creative, journalistic and educational websites. Mr Samul holds an MFA in Professional Writing from Western Connecticut State University. He has been a standing literary judge for the IMPAC Connecticut State University Young Writers Competition and a judge for the Langston Hughes Poetry Contest for the city of Norwich, Connecticut. Winner of the Connecticut AWP award in Fiction in 2006, his primary creative outlets are fiction writing and electronic publishing. He lives in New London, Connecticut.
Melissa Sanders-Self. Has published short fiction in anthologies by New Rivers Press, Doubleday and New Brighton Books. Her first novel, All that Lives (Warner Books, 2002) was based on the legend of the famous Bell Witch of Tennessee. She wrote, directed and produced the documentary film Writing Women's Lives, which aired nationally on PBS and is currently available through Films for the Humanities. Ms Sanders-Self teaches advanced and intermediate fiction at the University of California, Santa Cruz and is at work on a new novel.
John D. Scrimgeour. The author of two books of creative nonfiction and a book of poetry. His most recent book, Themes for English B: A Professor's Education in and Out of Class (U of Georgia, 2006) won the 2005 AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction. His other books are the poetry collection, The Last Miles (Fine Tooth Press, 2005) and the memoir, Spin Moves (Pecan Grove Press, 2000). His nonfiction has appeared in publications such as The Boston Globe Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Thought & Action, and his essay, "The Outfield," won the Writing about Baseball contest sponsored by the magazine Creative Nonfiction. His poetry has appeared in such magazines as Ploughshares, Poetry, Colorado Review and River Styx. He is Coordinator of Creative Writing at Salem State College in Salem, Massachusetts.
Peter Selgin. A short-story writer, essayist, and children's writer, his work has appeared in numerous publications, such as The Literary Review, Glimmer Train Stories, and Newsday Sunday Magazine, to name just a few. In addition to teaching a Master Class in fiction writing at Gotham Writer's Workshop, he has written an autobiographical novel, Life Goes to the Movies (Peter Selgin, 2004) and authored/illustrated the children's book S.S. Gigantic Across the Atlantic (Simon & Schuster, 2000) which was a Scholastic Book Club selection and won the Lemme Award for Best Children's Picture Book (the only national award judged by children.)
Irene Sherlock. Associate director of publications and design at Western Connecticut State University, as well as adjunct faculty member of the English department. She also is the author of several produced one-act plays. Her poems and essays have been published in numerous literary periodicals and anthologies, and have been broadcast on WSHU, an affiliate station of National Public Radio.
Thea Temple. Special Assistant to the Director of the Literature program at the National Endowment for the Arts from 1991-93. During federal budget freezes and cuts, she doubled as Challenge/Advancement Liaison, as well as specialist for Audience Development Projects and Literary Centers, Special Projects, and Small Press and Literary Magazine Publishing. Upon leaving the arts endowment, Ms. Temple was elected to two terms as Treasurer of Associated Writing Programs (AWP.) She has also facilitated task forces for the Southern Arts Federation and co-founded the Texas Literary Partnership with the Texas Commission on the Arts, the (then called) Austin Writers' League, and other literary groups to promote statewide collaborations.
Andy Thibault. Columnist for Law Tribune Newspapers, adjunct professor of journalism, consulting editor for Connecticut Review, and the author of Law & Justice in Everyday Life (Michelle Publishing Company, 2002). In addition to managing a non-profit foundation that awards prizes annually to young poets and writers in Connecticut, he is a professional boxing judge and a licensed private investigator. Thibault has taught investigative reporting for the MFA program for several semesters. Going forward, blogs will be part of that course of study.
Karen Smith-Vastola. A member of the playwrights & directors group at the Actors Studio, Ms. Smith-Vastola has taught playwriting at Andy's Summer Playhouse and Columbia University, and has written numerous plays, among them; The Appointment and Eggs & Apples, the latter of which was the recipient of the John Golden Playwriting Award in 2004 and was read at DR2 Theater in New York. Monologues and scenes from her plays Dog Eat Dog, The Family Tree, and Dead or Alive have been published in the Best Women's and Men's Anthologies (Dramatic Publishing) as well as Best Stage Monologues and Scenes from the 90's (Meriwether Publishing.)
Tim Weed. Tim’s fiction has appeared in Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Boston Fiction Annual Review, Margin and elsewhere, and his articles and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Backcountry, Couloir, Northern Woodlands, Writer’s Chronicle, and the anthology Tight Lines: Yen Years of the Yale Angler’s Journal (Yale University Press, 2007). He coordinates international programs for National Geographic Student Expeditions and recently directed creative writing workshops in Cuba and Argentina. Tim is at work on a novel.
Cecilia Woloch. Author of three award-winning collections of poems, most recently Late (BOA Editions 2003), and of numerous essays, articles and reviews. She has served on the faculties of numerous writing programs and has launched community outreach programs for poets and young people across the country. She has also worked as an editor, copywriter, public relations specialist and arts administrator. She is the founding director of Summer Poetry in Idyllwild and of the Paris Poetry Workshop.
