Dan Masterson : Biography, Literary career, Teaching, Works Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Biography

Dan Masterson was born in 1934 during the Great Depression as the youngest of Stephen and Kathleen Masterson's three children. He attended St. Paul's Parochial School in the Buffalo suburb, Kenmore, and graduated from Kenmore High School in 1952; Masterson being the president of his graduating class.

Masterson studied at Canisius College and graduated from Syracuse University in 1956, in what later became the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. After college, he worked as a disc jockey in Buffalo on WBNY, hosting Mystic Midnight, a jazz show, from midnight to 3 a.m. After serving in the Signal Corps, he was hired on to promote traveling Broadway plays and musicals, while his wife worked as a Madison Avenue copywriter. They moved to Rockland County where Dan became a substitute high school teacher, then a full-time teacher, before joining the English faculty at Rockland Community College, where he has remained since the mid-sixties. He and Janet divide their time between their home in Pearl River and their cabin in the high-peak region of the Adirondacks.

Literary career

Dan Masterson's first book, On Earth As It Is, was published in 1978, by The University of Illinois Press. In 1986, Masterson was elected to membership in Pen International in recognition of his first two volumes of verse: On Earth As It Is and Those Who Trespass. He's been a manuscript judge for The Associated Writing Programs' national manuscript competition, and a contributing editor to the annual PUSHCART PRIZE ANTHOLOGY. He also has been the recipient of two writing fellowships from The State University of New York, and was the first Writer-in-Residence at The Chautauqua Writers Center. In 2006, Syracuse University's Bird Library assumed stewardship of "The Dan Masterson Papers" for its Special Collections Research Center.^{[citation needed]}

Teaching

A recipient of the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, Masterson has taught at Rockland Community College (RCC), State University of New York, since the mid sixties. During eighteen of those years, he also served as an adjunct full professor at Westchester County's Manhattanville College, directing the poetry and screenwriting programs. Upon his retirement from Manhattanville, the college's Board of Trustees established The Dan Masterson Prize in Screenwriting.

References

^ "Dan Masterson: On Earth as It Is". capa.conncoll.edu. Retrieved 2022-08-19.
^ "Dan Masterson, Rockland's 1st poet laureate whose work was rooted in the soul, remembered". The Journal News. Retrieved 2022-08-19.