Faculty

Full-Time Faculty

Brian Clements, PhD, is a Professor and Chair for the Department of Writing and Literature, and director of the Kathwari Honors Program. He is author or editor of over a dozen collections of poetry, including, most recently, A Book of Common Rituals (Quale Press) and the New York Times New & Noteworthy anthology Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence (Beacon Press). His 200-day project Every Atom: Reflections on Whitman at 200 collected commentaries from 200 writers at North American Review. He was the founding Coordinator of the MFA in Creative and Professional Writing.

Higgins Hall 219B
(203) 837-8876
clementsb@wcsu.edu

Dr. Terrance Cheng Terrence Cheng served as chancellor of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) system from 2021-2025, and special advisor to the board from 2025-2026. Previous to this role, he served as campus director of the University of Connecticut Stamford campus from 2016 to 2021, where he was also a faculty member in the English department.

Cheng has also held several academic and administrative leadership and faculty roles which include associate provost/assistant vice president, Academic Programs at Brooklyn College; and associate dean, School of Arts and Humanities, and chair, Department of English at Lehman College.

Cheng, a first-generation student, earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Binghamton University and an MFA in fiction from the University of Miami, where he was a James Michener Fellow. He is the author of two novels: Sons of Heaven (2002), and Deep in the Mountains (2007), as well as numerous published short stories and essays. In 2005, he received a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. For more information, please visit www.professorcheng.com.

Higgins Hall 219C
(203) 837-9069
chengt@wcsu.edu

Brian Cordell is an Assistant Professor who holds an M.F.A. from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is the author of the chapbook, In Their Final Performance (Finishing Line Press, 2019), and his work can be found in New Haven Review, Caesura, San Pedro River Review, Rise Up Review, and Alien Magazine. In addition to teaching creative and professional writing courses for twenty years, he is a freelance writer and editor with a background in technical writing.

Higgins Hall 219F
(203) 837-9083
cordellb@wcsu.edu

Anthony D’Aries, MFA, is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of the MFA in Creative and Professional Writing. He is the author of The Language of Men: A Memoir (Hudson Whitman Press, 2012), which received the PEN/New England Discovery Prize and Foreword’s Memoir-of-the-Year Award. His essays have appeared in Boston Magazine, Memoir Magazine, Solstice, The Good Men Project, Shelf Awareness, and The Literary Review. Anthony has served on the board of PEN/New England as a member of the Freedom-to-Write Committee, leading writing workshops in prisons, shelters, hospitals, and residential care facilities, and co-chairing the inaugural PEN Writing and Trauma Conference. In 2016, he was the Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Fort Lyon writer in residence, where he taught writing workshops for homeless veterans.

Higgins Hall 219A
203-837-3252
dariesa@wcsu.edu

Oscar De Los Santos, PhD, is Co-Chair of the Department of Writing and Literature and former Chair of the English Department at Western Connecticut State University. His books include A Modern Bestiary: When the Ape-Hawk Strikes (a novel, co-written with Professor Kelly L. Goodridge), The Living Pulps (an edited short story collection), and 25 Questions All Writers Should Ask Themselves (with Professor Goodridge). His other books include Hardboiled Egg (short stories), Spirits of Texas and New England (folklore stories), and Infinite Wonderlands (science fiction, with David G. Mead). Dr. De Los Santos edited Madame Luna and other Moon Stories, Reel Rebels (film essays), and co-edited When Genres Collide (essays, with Thomas J. Morrissey). His stories and essays have appeared in Channeling the Future: Essays on Science Fiction and Fantasy Television, New York Review of Science Fiction, Extrapolation, Connecticut Review, Saranac Review, and other books and journals. His current projects include From Veiled Frights to Graphic Shocks: The Evolution of Horror Cinema, The Night Seasons (a horror novel featuring Tom Fate, paranormal investigator); The Tom Fate Casebook (a horror short story collection), and A Modern Bestiary 2: Beware the Bull-Swine. Visit Professors De Los Santos and Goodridge at www.talkingtheweird.com.

Higgins Hall 219E
(203) 837-9044
delossantoso@wcsu.edu

Don Moore, is an Assistant Professor and serves as Composition Coordinator and Writing Center Director at Western Connecticut State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Composition Studies from the University of Memphis, an M.A. in TESOL from Southeast Missouri State University, and an undergraduate degree in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His scholarship focuses on writing center history and pedagogy, writing program administration, WAC/WID, laboratory approaches to writing instruction, embedded writing consultants, assessment, and instructional agency, with historical research employing Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) to examine the development of writing centers and writing instruction. Central to his work is the idea that the writing center acts as a hub for writing-related activity across the university and a collaborative space that connects students, faculty, courses, disciplines, and programs through WAC/WID principles. His scholarship has appeared in Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, the Tennessee English Journal, and the WAC Clearinghouse, and his current work explores how writing centers, composition programs, and cross-campus partnerships can contribute to sustainable, institution-wide cultures of writing. .

Haas 303
(203) 837-3941
mooredo@wcsu.edu

John Roche, MFA, an Associate Professor, spent more than two decades as an award-winning journalist, mostly covering the Bronx, where he was born and raised. His debut novel, Bronx Bound, was released last year. Professor Roche immerses himself in the culture of the University, collaborating with other departments on various projects, Including Constitution Day. He teaches a full array of Journalism courses and serves as academic advisor to all of our Writing Majors specializing in Journalism. In 2021, Prof. Roche was recipient of the SGA Faculty of the Year award for the second consecutive year.

Higgins Hall 219C
(203) 837-9047
rochej@wcsu.edu

Distinguished Adjunct Faculty

Deatra Anderson

Email:andersond @wcsu.edu

Deatra Haimé Anderson teaches for the English and Writing department at WCSU. She has written popular culture articles for magazines such as Jane, Vibe, Mothering in the Middle, and Mosaic Literary Magazine, where she is also the book reviews editor. Her current project is co-writing a memoir for Corey Glover, lead singer of the Grammy award-winning band Living Colour.

Frances Dorris

Email: dorrisf@wcsu.edu

Kelly L. Goodridge

Email: goodridgek@wcsu.edu

Kelly L. Goodridge teaches fiction and essay workshops 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, When Genres Collide, and TV Rebels: People and Programs That Shaped the Medium, Volumes 1 and 2. Her fiction may be found in Madame Luna and Other Moon Stories and her novel, A Modern Bestiary: When the Ape-Hawk Strikes. A second Bestiary novel is forthcoming. Kelly holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University and an MA in English from WCSU. Contact her at: goodridgek@wcu.edu.

Jeffrey Hutcoe

Email: hutcoej@wcsu.edu

Vincent Kmetz

Email:kmetzv@wcsu.edu

Lisa Rae McCormick

Email: mccormickl@wcsu.edu

Lynne Paris-Purtle

Email: parispurtlel@wcsu.edu

Robin DeMerell ProveyEmail: proveyr@wcsu.edu Robin DeMerell Provey has taught in the English and Writing department at WCSU since 2013. An award-winning journalist, Robin studied journalism at Pace University, where she received the university’s Print Journalism Award. Robin spent more than a decade in the newsroom and has written for The News-Times, The Connecticut Law Tribune, and The Rivertowns Enterprise. Since 2013, she has also been the Public Relations consultant for Danbury Public Schools. Robin has an MA in English literature from WCSU, where she is currently pursuing an MFA in Professional and Creative Writing. Her most recent work, “Seeds of #MeToo Planted under the Orange Trees in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath,” was published in the spring 2020 issue of The Steinbeck Review.

Louisa Burns-Bisogno

Louisa Burns-Bisogno (now retired) is an award-winning screenwriter, director, author, and international media consultant with over 100 on-screen credits and an elected member of the Board of Governors of the National Academy for Television Arts & Sciences. 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. ‘Bridge’ was honored by Women in Film and the Congressional Committee for the Arts at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.

Louisa has trained professional writers in dramatic series techniques in Moscow, Dublin and more recently in Rome. 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 Louisa was a winner of the National Playwrights Conference at the O’Neill Theatre Center. She has had numerous plays produced including Angels and Infidels which she also directed. Seven of Louisa’s plays have been presented by the New York Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for staged readings.

A former council-member of the Writers Guild of America East, Louisa is active on the WGAE Digital Caucus. She is a professor of playwriting, screenwriting and webisode development at Western Connecticut State University.

Louisa’s most recent work, the co-authored The Night John Lennon Died…So Did John Doe, was published in 2015.

Emeritus Faculty

Edward A. Hagan, PhD, a CSU Professor Emeritus, 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. His memoir, To Vietnam in Vain: Memoir of an Irish-American Intelligence Advisor, 1969-1970, was published in 2015.

hagane@wcsu.edu

Breathing Space Broadsides

Faculty