Dan Masterson

Not to be confused with Danny Masterson.

Dan E. 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, the youngest of Stephen and Kathleen Masterson's three children. He attended St. Paul's Parochial School in Kenmore, New York, a Buffalo suburb, and graduated from Kenmore High School in 1952.

Masterson studied at Canisius University and graduated from Syracuse University in 1956 with a degree from 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. Following service in the Signal Corps, he was hired to promote traveling Broadway plays and musicals. He and his wife moved to Rockland County where he became a substitute high school teacher, then a full-time teacher, before joining the English faculty at Rockland Community College in the mid-1960s. Dan and Janet Masterson maintained homes in Pearl River and the high-peak region of the Adirondacks.

Literary career

Dan Masterson's first book of poetry, 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. His volumes of verse include On Earth as It Is and Those Who Trespass published in 1985. He served as a manuscript judge for The Associated Writing Programs' national manuscript competition and as a contributing editor to the annual Pushcart Prize Anthology. He received two writing fellowships from State University of New York and was the first Writer-in-Residence at The Chautauqua Writers Center. In 2006, Syracuse University's Bird Library acquired "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) in the mid-1960s. For eighteen years he also served as an adjunct full professor at Manhattanville College in Westchester County's, 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 in his honor.

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
• *Here We Are- Circumstantial Productions, 2014

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