Brian Clements, PhD coordinates the Department's MFA in Professional Writing. He edits the small press Firewheel Editions and the award-winning journal Sentence, a Journal of Prose Poetics. He is the author and editor of several books, including the forthcoming titles And How to End It (prose poems), Disappointed Psalms (poems), and the anthology An Introduction to the Prose Poem. Disappointed Psalms was awarded the Colombian Poetry Prize and will be published in 2008.

Oscar De Los Santos, PhD is current Chair of the Department of Writing, Linguistics and Creative Process.  He is the author of Hardboiled Egg (short stories) and Spirits of Texas and New England (folklore stories).  He co-authored Infinite Wonderlands (short stories, with David G. Mead) and Questions of Science, Answers to Life (essays, with JJ Sargent).  He co-edited When Genres Collide (essays, with Thomas J. Morrissey).  His essays and stories have appeared in New York Review of Science Fiction, Extrapolation, Connecticut Review, and Saranac Review.  He is working on X-TRA LARGE: Exploring Giant Creature Cinema.  He welcomes comments and questions at jekyllhyde@snet.net.

Edward A. Hagan, PhD has focused his recent scholarship on contemporary Irish and American fiction and essay writing.  He is particularly interested in what literary trends tell us about contemporary consciousness.  He has just completed a book on contemporary Irish and Irish-American fiction and memoir; it argues that farce is the contemporary writer’s tool for puncturing the balloon of triviality of contemporary culture. Hagan authored a Fall 2007 article that argues sports metaphors have become so pervasive in contemporary society that they restrict our abilities to think outside the box of winning and losing.

James R.  Scrimgeour, PhD has published seven books of poetry and over 200 poems in anthologies and periodicals. He has given over 100 public readings of his work, including one at an International Conference on Poetry and History, Stirling, Scotland. He served as Editor of Connecticut Review from 1992-1995. He has published a critical biography of Sean O'Casey (G. K. Hall) along with numerous reviews and articles on poetry and drama. He currently resides in New Milford Connecticut with his wife, Christine Xanthakos Scrimgeour.

Barry Antokoletz has taught English as a Second Language and writing and literature since 1970 at the college and high school levels on three continents. He says, "I am an unpublished, but ever hopeful, novelist still working on my third one.  (I have "finished" it twenty times over as many years.)" His favorite professional activity is teaching freshman composition at Westconn. "There I get paid for what I love to do, helping young people express their thoughts effectively and, if they are so inclined, creatively. " Antokoletz is an accomplished cellist and photographer.

Kathy Brady describes herself as "woman, a mother, a daughter, a wife/lifepartner/lover/friend, an aunt, a writer, thinker, learner, facilitator, survivor." She holds a BA in English, and an MA in English and Literature. Her teaching interests are the literature and film of war, especially post Vietnam; the culture of violence in America; the people and politics of AIDS; rap and hip-hop culture; Virginia Woolf, and poverty, wealth, and responsibility in world cultures. "And Writing…which is everything. Because as Tim O'Brien said, 'This too is true; stories can save us.'"

Kathleen Fleming received a BA from the State University of New York at Albany, graduating summa cum laude with a double major in English and Russian.  She participated in the first undergraduate student exchange program with the Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow.  Following graduation, she studied in the Masters Program in Creative Writing at Boston University, but left the program to work as journalist with the Gannett Westchester newspapers.  She later received a master’s degree in English from Westconn.

Kelly L. Goodridge has written for The Ridgefield Press and Lewisboro Ledger. She is a regular placement essay scorer for the WCSU Writing Department’s Writing Lab and scores SAT essays for Pearson Educational Measurement.  Recent publications include essays in Reel Rebels and SFRA’s When Genres Collide. Forthcoming publications include: When the Ape-Hawk Strikes:  Book One of A Modern Bestiary (a co-authored YA novel) and Possessions (a short story collection).

Lisa Rose McCormick has an MA in English from Westconn and a BA in journalism from Ohio State. She spent 17 years in Marketing and Consumer Advertising management, including stints at IBM, Procter & Gamble, and Wendy’s International.

Mary Ann Murtha began to teach Management at Westconn in 1987; she has been teaching in the English and/or Writing Department since 2004. She is on the Executive Board for Catholic Charities of Danbury.

Irene Sherlock is associate director of publications and design at Western Connecticut State University and teaches undergraduate and graduate writing classes. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and an MS in Marriage and Family Therapy from Southern Connecticut State University.  Her poems, essays, short stories and plays have been widely published in literary magazines and in several anthologies Her essays have aired on WSHU National Public Radio.