Dan Masterson

Not to be confused with Danny Masterson.

Dan Masterson (February 22, 1934 – August 12, 2022) was an American poet. He was born in Buffalo, New York.

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 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 in the mid 1960's. He and Janet divided 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.

Teaching

A recipient of the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, Masterson began teaching at Rockland Community College (RCC) and State University of New York in the mid 1960's. 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 College, the college's Board of Trustees established The Dan Masterson Prize in Screenwriting.

Works

Poetry collections

• On Earth As It Is - University of Illinois Press 1978
• Those who Trespass - University of Arkansas Press 1985
• World Without End - University of Arkansas Press 1991
• All Things, Seen and Unseen - University of Arkansas Press 1997

Awards

• Poetry Northwest Bullis Prize
• The Borestone Mountain Poetry Award
• Pushcart Prize 1978
• Pushcart Prize 1988
• The CCLM Fels Award
• Rockland County (NY) Poet Laureate 2009-2011
• Rockland County (NY) Poet Laureate 2011-2013