Faculty
Permanent Faculty
John P. Briggs, PhD., joined the faculty at WCSU in 1987 and is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Writing, Linguistics, and Creative Process. He is the author and co-author of several books, including Fire in the Crucible, on creativity (St. Martin's Press); three books on chaos: Turbulent Mirror (HarperCollins); Fractals, the Patterns of Chaos (Simon and Schuster); and Seven Life Lessons of Chaos (HarperCollins), and a collection of short stories, Trickster Tales (Fine Tooth Press, 2005). He is one of three distinguished Connecticut State University professors from WCSU. He served as senior editor of Connecticut Review from 2004-2007 and is the journal's associate editor. His website is http://people.wcsu.edu/briggsj.
Brian Clements is the MFA Coordinator and Professor of Writing, Linguistics, and Creative Writing. He is author or editor of over a dozen books of and about poetry, including the anthology An Introduction to the Prose Poem, And How to End It (Quale Press), and Disappointed Psalms (Meritage Press). He is Founding Editor of the small press Firewheel Editions and of Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics. Prof. Clements also has worked professionally in technical communications, corporate communications, grant-writing, and non-profit administration.
Oscar de los Santos is Professor and Chair of the Department of Writing, Linguistics, and Creative Process. Professor de los Santos is the author of Hard Boiled Egg (Fine Tooth Press, 2004) and Infinite Wonderlands (Fine Tooth Press, 2006.)
Edward Hagan is a Professor in the Department of Writing, Linguistics, and Creative Process. His teaching grows out of his primary scholarly focuses on Irish Studies and on war literature. He teaches all levels of writing courses. His latest book is Goodbye Yeats and O’Neill: Farce in Contemporary Irish and Irish-American Narratives (Editions Rodopi, 2010).
Shouhua Qi is Professor in the Department of English. Qi has published extensively both in the United States and in China. He is the author of When the Purple Mountain Burns (San Francisco: The Long River Press; Shanghai People's Press; Hong Kong Joint Press; 2005), a novel about the rape of Nanjing (1937-38). His screenplay, based on the novel, has been optioned for production. Qi's other works include Pearl Jacket and Other Stories: Flash Fiction from Contemporary China (Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2008), and Red Guard Fantasies and Other Stories (Long River Press, 2007). Currently Qi is working on a novel about an American-Korean War POW in China, tentatively titled Twin-Sun River. A play he wrote based on the novel was staged by Shanghai Theater Academy in spring 2009.
Mentors
Joe Ahearn is a successful professional writer with more than 20 years experience in writing for 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 most recent book of poetry, Five Fictions (Sulphur River Review Press, 2003).
Holly Azevedo has been a writer, editor, instructor and manager for nearly thirty years. Much of her career was as a project manager for a major information technology corporation, where she wrote and managed the development of communications and technical publications. She has designed and delivered courses to writers, and to technology developers and users. Her non-corporate publications include articles on collectibles and the arts. She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Creative and Professional Writing from Western Connecticut State University. Her current work is in creative nonfiction, with special interests in history and culture.
Sandra Rodriguez Barron is the author of two novels published by HarperCollins: The Heiress of Water, winner of the 2007 International Latino Book Award for Debut Fiction, and Stay With Me. She is the recipient of a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Fellowship, a Greater Hartford Arts Council grant, a National Association of Latino Arts and Culture grant, and an artist fellowship grant from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism.
Roger 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.
Louisa Burns-Bisogno is an “O’Neill Playwright” and a winner at the National Playwrights Conference. She is an award-winning screenwriter, director, author, and international media consultant with over 100 on-screen credits. Her movies have been produced on cable TV and on all the major U.S. networks, as well as distributed internationally. Among these are:My Body, My Child with Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Jessica Parker and Cynthia Nixon; Bridge to Silence, with Marlee Matlin; Mary Silliman’s War, and Nobody's Child, which netted an Emmy for Marlo Thomas. Louisa has trained professional writers in dramatic series techniques in Moscow, Dublin, and more recently in Rome where she is Head-Writer on a TV series in development. She has written story and scripts for popular American daytime series such as The Young and the Restless, One Life to Live and As the World Turns. She has had numerous plays produced including Angels and Infidels which she also directed. Seven of Louisa’s plays were selected by the New York Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for staged readings. She has produced and directed many of her students’ plays in this prestigious venue.
Michael Capuzzo is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Murder Room, a true detective story that was nominated for the National Book Award, and is under development as a CBS-TV weekly series. His previous bestseller, Close To Shore, was a People magazine “Top Ten Book of the Year” hailed as an “adventure classic” with “artistry reminiscent of Stephen Crane” by The New Yorker. He and his wife publish Mountain Home, a winner of numerous awards for excellence. A former staff writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Miami Herald, he is a six-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, has written for Esquire, Reader’s Digest, The Wall Street Journal, and was nominated by Sports Illustrated for a National Magazine Award. He has appeared on NPR, CNN, and ABC News as an expert on storytelling.
Richard Cass is author of the story collection, Gleam of Bone (North Coast Press, 2005) and two books of poetry. He has won prizes for his short fiction, from REDBOOK, Playboy, Writers' Digest and the Pacific Northwest Writers' Conference. He is published widely, and a recent short story is included in the anthology, Best American Stories of the West, Volume 1. He lives in Brookfield, Connecticut, where he operates Cass Communications, Inc., specializing in technical and business communications.
Rita Ciresi is 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.
Jane K. Cleland’s multiple award-nominated and IMBA best selling Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery series [St. Martin’s Minotaur] has been reviewed as an Antiques Roadshow for mystery fans. “Josie” stories have also appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Jane chairs the Wolfe Pack’s literary awards, which include the Nero Award and the Black Orchid Novella Award, granted in partnership with Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. She is a past chapter president of the Mystery Writers of America/New York Chapter and served on the national board as well. Library Journal named Consigned to Death a “core title” for librarians looking to build a cozy collection, one of only 22 titles listed, along with books by Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. Jane also writes noir plays around the theme of women who love men they hate. www.janecleland.net
Matt Debenham is the author of The Book of Right and Wrong (OSU Press, 2010), winner of the 2010 Ohio State University Press Prize for fiction. His work has appeared in such publications as The Pinch, Roanoke Review, Battered Suitcase, Painted Bride Quarterly, and others. He has been the recipient of a Fiction Fellowship from the CT Council on Culture and Tourism, and was Peter Taylor Scholar at the 2007 Sewanee Writers' Conference. He is at work on a novel.
Laura B. Hayden is the author of Staying Alive: A Love Story, a memoir of loss and recovery. The book has been recommended by the American Institute of Health Care Professionals. Laura writes for technorati.com and opentohope.org. She blogs at www.mommyofthebride.blogspot.com.
Gwen Jones is a graduate of the WCSU MFA in Creative and Professional Writing program, and a Craft and Industry Instructor for Literary Powerhouse Consulting. Her work has appeared in The Kelsey Review, The Connecticut River Review, and her novel, Andy Devine Takes a Wife (working title) has recently been purchased by HarperCollins Avon. A writer of women’s fiction and romance, she lives with her husband, Frank, near Trenton, New Jersey. To see more, visit her site at www.gwenjoneswrites.com.
James Lomuscio is an award-winning journalist with more than 28 years experience as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor for The New York Times and other local publications. Mr. Lomuscio is the author of Village of the Dammed: The Fight for Open Space and the Flooding of a Connecticut Town (University Press of New England, 2005).
Nick Mamatas is the author of the novels Move Under Ground (Night Shade, 2004), Under My Roof (Soft Skull, 2007), Sensation (PM Press, 2001), The Damned Highway (with Brian Keene, Dark Horse 2011), Bullettime (CZP, 2012), and the forthcoming The Last Weekend (PS Publications, 2013) and Love is the Law (Dark Horse, 2013). Nick co-edited the magazine Clarkesworld and has co-edited several anthologies, including most recently the Bram Stoker Award-winning Haunted Legends (Tor Books, 2010) with Ellen Datlow, and The Future is Japanese with Masumi Washington (Haikasoru, 2012). He has published over eighty short stories in literary journals including subTERRAIN, New Haven Review, and Mississippi Review (online), genre publications such as Asimov's Science Fiction, Weird Tales, Tor.com, Lovecraft Unbound, and Long Island Noir, and slick magazines including Razor and Spex. Nick's reportage and essays have appeared in The Smart Set, Village Voice, The Writer, Poets & Writers, Fine Books and Collections, The New Humanist, In These Times, H+ and many other venues. His non-fiction books include the writing guide Starve Better and the gag title Insults Every Man Should Know.
Molly McGlennen was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is of Anishinaabe and European descent. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of English and Native American Studies. She holds a PhD in Native American Studies. Her scholarship and creative writing have been published widely. Most recently, her first collection of poetry Fried Fish and Flour Biscuits was published by Salt’s award-winning “Earthworks Series.” Her book of scholarship entitled Creative Alliances: The Transnational Designs of Indigenous Women’s Poetry is forthcoming.
Mark Misercola is a communications strategist and a former speechwriter for senior executives of corporations including 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 titled, Death to the Centurion (Twilight Times Books, 2004).
Sonja Mongar, a Montana-born journalist, editor, photographer and memoirist,is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagez, where she teaches creative writing, film studies and journalism. She participated in the Sea Grant'ss Science & Journalism project, which was created to train science majors as science journalists. She holds an MA from UCF and an MFA from UNO in creative nonfiction. Her twenty-year writing career includes print journalism, editing and radio broadcasting, marketing, advertising and public relations. Independent projects that blur the lines between culture, canon, genre, language and generation have resulted in the production of four volumes of bilingual literary and arts journals—pastiche and Manchas… as well as a project involving student writers, Colorn Colorado: Voces del Mar, featuring coastal and marine themed stories of West Puerto Rico’s past. Mongar experiments with multimodal life writing using cyber-hypertext as narrative space. She has published Tomfoolery, a trauma narrative of her brother’s murder and Love in a Field of Wheat, based on her great-grandmother’s 1907 diary. Other works in progress include a full-length memoir and a film documentary. Mongar plays harmonica in the fusin jbara band, Mijo de la Palma, and co-produces free art, poetry and music events for the community.
E. K. Mortenson’s poetry has appeared in print and online in such venues as The Found Poetry Project, Pisgah Review, RATTLE, Six Sentences, Connecticut Review, Broken Bridge Review, and Connecticut River Review. He is the author of the chapbook Dreamer or the Dream (Last Automat Press, 2010) and his full-length manuscript, What Wakes Us, is scheduled to appear in 2011-2012 from Cervena Barva Press. He was the 2008 recipient of the Leslie Leeds Poetry Prize. Mortenson is a member of the National Book Critics’ Circle and his book reviews have appeared in RATTLE, Connecticut River Review, Rain Taxi, Gently Read Lit, and The Centrifugal Eye.
Lou Orfanella, a New York based teacher, writer, and workshop facilitator, has also worked as a broadcast and print journalist. Orfanella is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama. His recent work includes The Sun Cannot Decide, Brief Encounters: Flash Fiction, and A Cabin in the Pines: A One Act Play. He has published over 100 articles, essays, columns, reviews and poems in numerous regional and national magazines, newspapers, and journals including The New York Daily News, College Bound, English Journal, World Hunger Year Magazine, Discoveries, Teacher Magazine, and New York Teacher. He holds degrees from Columbia University and Fordham University. Orfanella, who teaches writing at WCSU, has presented scores of public readings of his work and offers individual and group writing workshops.
Josh Pahigian is the author of several baseball books, including 101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out and The Ultimate Baseball Road Trip. Josh has also written for ESPN.com and other periodicals. Josh's first novel, Strangers on the Beach, is a thriller set in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Publisher's Weekly named the book one of its "Fall 2012 Indie Sleeper Picks." Josh is also the faculty adviser of The Nor'easter News.
Dan Pope is the author of In the Cherry Tree (Picador, 2003.) His stories have been published in numerous magazines including, Crazyhorse, Postroad, and Iowa Review.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 the Connecticut Commission on the Arts awarded him a grant in fiction.
David Rich wrote the feature film Renegades, starring Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Philips. He worked on other film scripts, for which he received a multitude of pats on the back in lieu of credit. Rich wrote television episodes for MacGyver, Legend and StarGate - SG1 and he has written three plays. He sat on the other side of the desk as Vice President of Development for George Englund Productions, based at Warner Brothers. Rich's first novel Caravan of Thieves received advance praise from Kirkus Review and Publisher's Weekly. www.davidrichbooks.com
John Roche has been an award-winning newspaper journalist for twenty years. In addition to stints as an actor and stand-up comedian, he has taught journalism, media studies, English composition and writing at several colleges in the tri-state region, and was recognized as Adjunct Faculty Member of the Year in 2008 by Marist College. He writes fiction in addition to teaching and his work as a journalist.
Onnesha Roychoudhuri is an editor, journalist, and fiction writer. Her writing has appeared in a number of outlets, including The Nation, Boston Review, The American Prospect, Salon, Mother Jones, n+1, McSweeney's, Opium, and Wag's Review. Most recently, she worked as an editor for the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, helping to fund, edit, and place investigative journalism in a range of outlets, from Harper's and GQ to Orion and the Oxford American. She has also contributed to a number of books, including Women’s Lives (McGraw-Hill, May 2006), Send Yourself Roses (Springboard Press, February 2008), 109 Forgotten American Heroes (DK Press, October 2009), How to Rule the World (Klutz, January 2011), Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives (McSweeney’s, March 2011), and Junk-box Jewelry (Zest Books, June 2012).
Ron Samul is publisher of the international e-zine Miranda Literary Magazine. He writes for Inquiring News in Hartford, Connecticut, reviews books for Library Journal, and is founder of Northeast Boxing News. A professional tutor and creative writing mentor, Samul also instructs students in new media and electronic publishing, and manages electronic media for a collection of creative, journalistic and educational websites. 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. Samul holds an MFA in Creative and Professional Writing from WCSU and lives in New London, Connecticut.
John D. Scrimgeour is 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. His essay, “The Outfield,” won the Writing about Baseball contest sponsored by the magazine Creative Nonfiction. Scrimgeour’s poetry has appeared in such magazines as Ploughshares, Poetry, Colorado Review and River Styx. In 2010, he and the musician Philip Swanson, as the performance group Confluence, released a CD of poetry and music titled Ogunquit (confluence-poetryandmusic.com). He is a Professor of English at Salem State University.
Lisa Siedlarz is author of I Dream My Brother Plays Baseball (Clemson University Digital Press, 2009) and What We Sign Up For (forthcoming from Pecan Grove Press, 2011). She is editor of Connecticut River Review, the national poetry journal supported by the Connecticut Poetry Society, and she is managing editor for Connecticut Review. Her work has appeared in publications including The MacGuffin, Calyx, RATTLE, War, Literature & the Arts, Louisiana Literature, Main Street Rag, The Patterson Review, Big Bridge, Kritya, and Poems & Plays. Her work has been anthologized in Warsaw Tales, and Battle Runes: Writings on War. Siedlarz facilitated a 16-week writing workshop with Vietnam veterans and edited a collection of their work titled A Season of Now. She teaches a bi-monthly creative writing workshop with veterans at the New Haven Vet Center.
Karen Smith Vastola's most recent play, Buried Words was part of the New York International Fringe Festival 2011. 7 Kinds of Love was produced at DR2 Theatre/ D- Lounge, NYC 2009. Her play WORDS was developed as a member of the terraNOVA Collective Groundbreakers Playwriting Group, NYC in 2009. Karen's commissioned play Joseph & the Pinenut was produced at Andy's Summer Playhouse, N.H. in 2007. Useless Inc. was commissioned and produced at Andy's in 2006 and directed by Johanna Gruenhut. The Appointment was part of Rattlestick's 2004 EXPOSURE Festival and a finalist for the Kitchen Dog Theatre New Works Festival. Her play Eggs & Apples was recipient of a 2004 JOHN GOLDEN PLAYWRITING AWARD and read at DR2 Theater, New York. A section of Eggs & Apples was produced at Columbia University's One-Act Summer Play Festival and directed by Gisela Cardenas. Under the Bed was a finalist in the Drury University One-Act Play Competition 2004. Monologues/Scenes from her plays have been published in the Best Women's and Men's Anthologies by Smith Krauss, as well as Best Stage Monologues and Scenes from the 90's, Meriwether Publishing. She has been a Yaddo fellow. Ms. Smith Vastola graduated from Columbia University'ss MFA Playwriting Program. Karen is a member of the Dramatist Guild.
Lori Soderlind is author of Chasing Montana, a memoir. Her essays have been featured on NPR and in anthologies. The Norton Anthology of Creative Nonfiction includes her essay "66 Signs That the Former Student Who Invited You to Dinner Is Trying to Seduce You," which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has reviewed for the New York Times Sunday Book Review, and as a longtime journalist, her work has appeared in a variety of newspapers and magazines, including the Times and The Boston Globe, Montana Magazine, and others.
Paul Steinmetz is Director of WCSU University Relations and an adjunct faculty member of the Writing, Linguistics and Creative Writing department. He was editor of The News-Times, the daily newspaper that covers the region, for 10 years. He writes a blog, WCSU in the Age of Reason, for Hearst Connecticut Newspapers and lectures and provides written commentary on the news and public relations industries. He is a contributing editor for Tribuna Newspaper and wrote a chapter in the PRNews Media Training Guidebook. Paul holds an M.B.A. from WCSU and a B.A. in journalism from San Francisco State University.
Tim Weed’s short fiction has appeared in Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, LITnIMAGE, and numerous other literary journals and anthologies. Tim’s essays and articles have appeared in national magazines including The Morning News, Cross Country Skier, Backcountry, Empirical, and Writer’s Chronicle, and his essay on Cuba garnered a 2012 Best Travel Writing Award from Traveler's Tales. Based in Vermont, Tim travels widely as a consultant and director for arts, cultural exchange, and creative writing programs abroad. His writing interests include short fiction, literary-historical fiction, travel writing, writing about adventure, nature, and the outdoors, and novels for young adult and middle grade readers. His blog, Storycraft, is dedicated to the writing craft: http://weedlit.blogspot.com
Anne Witkavitch is a communications expert, transition specialist, published author and sought after speaker. Her award-winning anthology, Press Pause Moments: Essays about Life Transitions by Women Writers, is a collection of stories about change, adversity and celebration. The book received a 2011 Clarion award. Anne is a contributing writer and blogger for MariaShriver.com, TravelingMom.com, CreatedbyChicks.com and her blog, The Eclectic Writer; her work has also appeared in Connecticut Muse, Miranda Literary Magazine, and the Journal of Employee Communications. She has ghost written numerous articles and edited technical guidebooks and nonfiction books. She also served as managing editor of several Thin Threads special editions and the 2010 anthology. Anne's work appears in the anthology Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing. As principal of Anne W Associates, Anne consults with clients on strategic communications and change management. She also teaches managerial and professional writing at Western Connecticut State University and received her M.F.A. in Professional Writing from that school in 2007. She is a former corporate communications executive for GE and The Hartford.
Karen Romano Young is a science writer, children's author and illustrator. She has been involved with books and writing for as long as she can remember. The author of more than twenty books, including novels, nonfiction, and graphic novels, Karen has taken her work to the top of the world -- the Arctic Ocean -- and the bottom of the ocean -- in a submarine. Recent work includes writing and drawing aboard an icebreaker, creating Humanimal Doodles -- a science comic, and the children's book Doodlebug: A Novel in Doodles.
