Faculty Profiles

Tom D'Angelo

Tom D'Angelo was born in the now fashionable and expressive neighborhood of Astoria, NY. The first of his family to attend college, he received his master's degree in English with a concentration in creative writing from Queens College/CUNY. In addition to a collection of his original poetry, his master's thesis included his verse translations of selected biblical narratives from the Book of Genesis. Since joining the English faculty at NCC in 2000, Professor D'Angelo has worked in the Writing Center and has taught courses in Mythology and Folklore, Film and Literature, and Creative Writing. His current projects include a series of creative non-fiction essays on his formative years in Queens, NY and poems "assembled" from found words and phrases from The New York Times.

Tom D'Angelo

Sabrina Davis

Sabrina Davis first joined the English Department at Nassau Community College in 2009 and has served as the Creative Writing Program Coordinator since the program’s inaugural semester in fall of 2016. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in American Studies from Saint Louis University, an M.A. in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University, and a B.A. in History from CUNY Baruch College. Born and raised on Long Island, she currently resides in Lloyd Harbor, NY with her husband and two children.

Sabrina Davis

Jared Harél

Jared Harél is the author of Go Because I Love You (Diode Editions, 2018). He's been awarded the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from American Poetry Review, as well as the William Matthews Poetry Prize from Asheville Poetry Review. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as Tin House, The Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, Massachusetts Review, Poetry Daily and 32 Poems, and his narrative long-poem, The Body Double, was published by Brooklyn Arts Press (2012). Harél teaches writing at Nassau Community College, where he is a Faculty Advisor for the Creative Writing Club and LUNA. He lives with his wife and two kids in Queens, NY.

Jared Harel

Sara Hosey

Sara Hosey is the author of three young adult novels--Iphigenia Murphy, Imagining Elsewhere, and Summer People--as well as a novella, Great Expectations, and a short story collection, which will be out in 2024. Sara is a tree enthusiast, and, when she is not teaching or writing, she likes to spend time outdoors in upstate New York with her family and pets.
Sara Hosey

Amy King

Amy King's book, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. Of I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press), John Ashbery describes Amy King's poems as bringing "abstractions to brilliant, jagged life, emerging into rather than out of the busyness of living." Safe was one of Boston Globe's Best Poetry Books of 2011. King joins the ranks of Ann Patchett, Eleanor Roosevelt & Rachel Carson as the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women's National Book Association). She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and co-edited with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She also co-edited the anthology, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College.

Amy King

Mary Lannon

Mary Lannon is a 2020 recipient of a New Work Grant from the Queens Council on the Arts, a 2021 City Artist Corp grant recipient, and a finalist in the 2019 Iron Horse Literary Review Trifecta Contest. Her short stories have been published at Story, New World Writing(ed. Frederick Bartheleme),Woven Tale Press (prose editor DeWitt Henry) and The Write Launch. Her poetry appears at Queen Mob's Teahouse and at Poets of Queens and her play was shortlisted for the Bechdel Group's play-in-progress reading series.  She belongs to the NYC Irish American Writers and Artists group and runs a reading series in Kew Gardens, NY where she lives. At work on a second novel, she is looking for a publishing home for her first novel. She has taught at NCC since 2007.

Mary Lannon

Richard Jeffrey Newman

Richard Jeffrey Newman has been a member of Nassau Community College’s English Department since 1989. His books of poetry include Words for What Those Men Have Done (Guernica Editions 2017), and The Silence of Men (CavanKerry Press 2006)He has also co-translated four books of classical Persian poetry, most recently The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahameh (Junction Press 2011). Professor Newman has been curating the First Tuesdays reading series in Jackson Heights, NY since 2012.

Richard Jeffrey Newman

Joe Pilaro

Joe Pilaro studied theater and fiction writing at the University of Vermont. He has directed many plays and musicals, and adapted and directed The Emperor's New Clothes and The LIttle Prince for a touring children theater company in Vermont. He has worked as the Program Coordinator of Columbia University's Film School and taught writing at Howard University. In the late nineties, What Your Hairdresser Knows, a play he co-wrote with his writing partner Joe Gorrie, was produced by the Homegrown Theater in New York. They relocated to Los Angeles and wrote television spec scripts, an animated series, and feature film scripts. He has taught creative writing at West Los Angeles College and has taught at NCC since 2011.

Joe Pilaro

Christina M. Rau

Christina M. Rau is the author of the poetry collection What We Do To Make Us Whole (Alien Buddha Press 2021)the Elgin Award-winning Liberating The Astronauts (Aqueduct Press 2017), and the chapbooks WakeBreatheMove and For The Girls, I. She’s served as Poet in Residence for both Oceanside Library NY and Cedarmere and was named Long Island Poet of the Year by Walt Whitman Birthplace. Her writing has appeared in various literary journals, including her favorites fillingStation and The Disappointed Housewife as well as on the airwaves for Destinies on WSUB. In her non-writing life, when she’s not teaching yoga or offering reiki, she’s watching the Game Show Network. www.christinamrau.com

Christina M. Rau

Matthew Rotando

Matthew Rotando has published poems and/or illustrated poems in various places, including Eoagh, Wavelength, BigCityLit.com, Drunken Boat, Everyday Genius, Matador, Oddball Magazine, Acta Victoriana, Green Linden, and Politics Slash Letters magazines. He has written two poetry books, The Comeback's Exoskeleton (2008) and Hail (2020), published by Upset Press, a division of the University of Nebraska Press. He has a B.A. in English Literature from Duke University, an M.F.A. in Poetry from CUNY Brooklyn College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature from University of Arizona. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Sri Lanka, attached to the University of Peradeniya, in Kandy, where he wrote a manuscript of poems connected to his time living in monasteries and accompanying monks on walking pilgrimages around the island. While there he also taught creative writing workshops and edited and published Slippage, a collection of fiction, non-fiction and poetry written by Sri Lankans, under the pseudonym M. Abayaratana. He has also taught poetry and surrealist writing workshops at the University of Arizona Poetry Center as a visiting poet. His poem “Story of Learning” won the University of Arizona Academy of American Poets award, judged by Srikanth Reddy. He is a winner of the Carol Farber Honor’s Program Excellence in Teaching Award at NCC. 

Matthew Rotando

Gina Sipley

Gina Sipley serves as Coordinator for the A.A. in English degree program and co-advises the Creative Writing Club and its award-winning journal, Luna. She writes about education and technology for New Media + Society, Al Jazeera America, Newsday,  English Journal, Mic, and EdSurge. Her book, Just Here For The Comments, is forthcoming from Bristol University Press. When writing poetry, she has published under Gina Marie Liotta for New York Quarterly, The Sierra Nevada Review, The Paterson Literary Review, LIPS, The Healing Muse, and others. Her manuscript, Skin, was a semifinalist for the Laura Boss Poetry Prize from New York Quarterly Press. Her narrative poetry explores 20th and 21st century Long Island life and frequently includes themes related to dis/Ability studies and education. A first-generation college graduate, she holds a Ph.D. in digital Literacy Studies from Hofstra University, a Master's in English from Syracuse University, a Master's in Education from the University of Oregon, and a Bachelor's in English and Creative Writing from SUNY Binghamton. 

Gina Sipley

Beth Beatrice Smith

Beth Beatrice Smith holds a B.A. in English from Wesleyan University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from The New School. She is a former assistant editor for Essence Magazine and the former managing editor of Blackballot.com. Professor Smith has served as chair of the Creative Writing Project and is the current fiction editor for The Nassau Review.  She joined the faculty English department in 2006. 

Beth Beatrice Smith

Pramila Venkateswaran

Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island (2013-15) and co-director of Matwaala: South Asian Diaspora Poetry Festival, is the author of Thirtha (Yuganta Press, 2002) Behind Dark Waters (Plain View Press, 2008), Draw Me Inmost (Stockport Flats, 2009), Trace (Finishing Line Press, 2011), Thirteen Days to Let Go (Aldrich Press, 2015), and Slow Ripening (Local Gems, 2016). An award winning poet, she teaches English and Women's Studies at Nassau Community College, New York. Her blogs include www.poetrybazaar.blogspot.com and www.womeninandbeyond.org. Author of numerous essays on poetics as well as creative non-fiction, she is also the 2011 Walt Whitman Birthplace Association Long Island Poet of the Year

Pramila Venkateswaran

Tim Wood

Tim Wood is the author of two books of poems, Otherwise Known as Home (BlazeVOX, 2010) and Notched Sunsets (Atelos, 2016). He is also co-editor of The Hip Hop Reader (Longman, 2008). His critical work on poetry and poetics can be found at ActionYes.org and Jacket2.org as well as in Convolution and Leviathan; his poetry reviews can be found at the Colorado Review, The Iowa Review, and the Boston Review. In 2017, his poem "Marginalia Inter Alia" won The Elizabeth Curry Poetry Contest, and his poem "Shiki" was first-runner up for RHINO magazine's Founder's Award. He also had a poem included in Black Lives Have Always Mattered, A Collection of Essays, Poems, and Personal Narratives. Ed. Abiodun Oyewole, one of the original Last Poets. He holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from U.C. Berkeley and an M.F.A. in Poetry from The Iowa Writers' Workshop. He was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Tübingen in Germany from 2013 to 2014, where he taught courses on hip-hop as literature and on American poetry. He is currently a professor of English at SUNY Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York.

Tim Wood

John Dermot Woods

John Dermot Woods writes stories and draws comics in Brooklyn, NY. He is the author of several comics and works of fiction, including The Baltimore Atrocities (Coffee House Press), Mortals (Radix Media), and Activities (Publishing Genius). He enjoys playing tennis on New York City’s cracked courts and surfing along New York City’s temperamental and often frigid shoreline.

John Dermot Woods

 

 

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