Conference Faculty
Faculty bios:
Louisa Burns-Bisogno is an award-winning screenwriter, director, author, and international 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. Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Vanessa Redgrave are among the stars in her productions. Louisa has been a writing consultant to Russian and Italian TV. She has also written for popular American series such as The Young and the Restless and As the World Turns. Many of her stage plays have been produced. She has arranged for WestConn students to participate in Stage Readings of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in New York.
Oscar De Los Santos is Chair of the Writing Department at WCSU. Oscar has written and edited several fiction and non-fiction books, including Hardboiled Egg, Infinite Wonderlands, and Madame Luna and other Moon stories. His novel, After Celia, will be published in 2013.
Kelly L. Goodridge has taught writing for over a decade at WCSU. She has written for The Ridgefield Press and Lewisboro Ledger and was awarded the Arthur R. Riel, Jr. Freelance Journalism Award at Fairfield University. Kelly's publications include essays in Reel Rebels, SFRA’s When Genres Collide and TV Rebels: People and Programs That Shaped the Medium, Volumes 1 and 2, and "Madame Luna," in a short story collection. Forthcoming publications include When the Ape-Hawk Strikes: Book One of A Modern Bestiary (a co-authored YA novel). Kelly holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Fairfield University and an M.A. in English from WCSU. Kelly can be contacted at kellyhasclass@sbcglobal.net.
James Lomuscio has been a journalist for 35 years, writing for Gannett, the New York Times, Connecticut Post, Stamford Advocate, and he is currently Associate Editor for WesportNow.com, an online news site covering Wesport, Connecticut. He also served as Editor of the Westport News and Westport Magazine and has won numerous writing awards, including three First Place awards from the New England Press Association and a First Place from the Society of Professional Journalists.
His book, Village of the Dammed: The Fight for Open Space and the Flooding of a Connecticut Town was a finalist for the 2006 Connecticut Book Award. He is also the author of the McGraw-Hill text Writing with Your Head and Your Heart: Balancing Logic and Emotion to Create Powerful Nonfiction. Mr. Lomuscio teaches journalism and creative writing in Western Connecticut State University's Department of Writing, Linguistics and Creative Process, and he has served as a mentor in the university's MFA in Professional Writing Program.
Jasmine Dreame Wagner is the author of two chapbooks: Rewilding, winner of the 2012 Ahsahta Press Chapbook Contest, selected by Cathy Park Hong (Ahsahta Press, 2013); and Listening for Earthquakes, first runner-up for the 2011 Caketrain Chapbook Contest, selected by Rosmarie Waldrop (Caketrain, 2012.) Her poems and short stories have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Blackbird, Colorado Review, Indiana Review, NANO Fiction, New American Writing, Seattle Review, Verse, and in two anthologies: The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta Press, 2012) and Lost and Found: Stories from New York (Mr. Beller's Neighborhood Books, distributed by W.W. Norton, 2009.) A graduate of Columbia University and the University of Montana, Jasmine has received grants and fellowships from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Hall Farm Center for Arts & Education, Kultuuritehas Polymer, Summer Literary Seminars - Kenya, and The Wassaic Project. More information about Jasmine's writing and work as a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist can be found here: www.songsaboutghosts.com
