Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Playwriting, Screenwriting, Memoir, Creative Non-Fiction

English

K-12 Schools, Adult Day Care, Assisted Living, College/University, Community Center, Independent Living, Library

Dramatists Guild of America; Irish American Writers and Artists; Association of Personal Historians

Theatre: Northport One-Act Play Festival, Northport, NY: April 2012 - Performance of play "But Peter Can" April 2011 - Performance of play "A Map of Long Island" (won Best Playwright award) April 2010 - Performance of play "Blood Brothers" (won Best Playwright award) Poetry: "Poem for Bill Evans," Humanities Magazine, State University of New York at Farmingdale, Spring 2009 "Yellow Curlers", The Long Islander (weekly newspaper), January 2009 "Writing Helps," Primal Sanities: A Tribute Anthology to Walt Whitman, Fall 2007 Fiction: "Old Blue" (short story) Blue Cathedral fiction anthology, Red Hen Press, Spring 2000

St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NY, Adjunct Writing Instructor,Sept. 2012-Present; Atria at Cutter Mill, Great Neck, NY, Playwriting Instructor, Sept. 2012-Present; Queens Public Library, Jamaica, NY, Outreach Librarian, June 2000-May 2011; Great Neck Adult Education Center, Great Neck, NY, Creative Writing Instructor (Taproot Workshop for Older Writers), Fall 1997-Fall 1999; Huntington YMCA, Huntington, NY, Creative Writing Instructor, Spring-Summer 1998

I believe everyone has a story to tell and that we can all learn from the stories of the generations ahead of us. In writing groups or classes, I attempt to build a community in which each member feels comfortable enough to write and then share his or her work. I emphazize the positive aspects of a person's work, then make suggestions on how the piece could be taken further. I ask other members to do the same. I see my role as a leader who is there to encourage self expression by each participant, no matter what the writing form or how long or short the piece. I worked as an outreach librarian for Queens Library in both schools (grades K-8) and older adult facilities. I developed and ran memoir writing workshops for older adults and intergenerational oral history projects in which seventh and eighth graders interviewed elders at local senior centers. In the intergenerational projects we created partnerships between age groups, building understanding and appreciation. I edited the oral history interviews and produced booklets of these as a way to preserve local history. I have Masters degrees in Creative Writing and Library Science and was a Fellow at the Lifelong Access to Learning Conference, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.