Executive Board, President
Executive Board, Vice President
Executive Board, Secretary
Executive Board, Treasurer
Honorary Board Member
Writer in residence at Walt Whitman Birthplace, first poet laureate of Suffolk County. Author of 45 chapbooks of poetry and 7 albums of poetry/music. Editor of Poetrybay, Long Island Quarterly and Walt's Corner (The Long Islander). Winner of PEN OAKLAND Josephine Miles Poetry Award.
Honorary Board Member
Gayl was the Nassau County Poet Laureate 2009-11 and the Walt Whitman Birthplace 2016 Poet of the Year,, Gayl Teller is author of 7 poetry collections, most recently, Flashlight: New and Selected Poems (WordTech/ Cherry Grove) and editor of 2 poetry anthologies, Toward Forgiveness (Writer's Ink)-- awarded a NY State Decentralization Grant for the Arts-- and Corona (Whitman Birthplace). Director of the Mid-Island Y Poetry Series, Plainview, NY, from which 150 of her reviews of feature poets have been archived at the Plainview-Old Bethpage Library, she teaches at Hofstra University and is the recipient of many poetry awards.
Honorary Board Member
Linda Opyr was the Nassau County Poet Laureate 2011-13 and in April of 2001, received a Proclamation in honor of her poetry from the Suffolk County Legislature. She is the author of nine poetry collections, and her poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Hudson Review, and The New York Times. She was a nominee for the 2025 Forward Prize for Poetry: Best Single Poem – Written.
Board Member
Pramila is the Co-director of Matwaala: South Asian Diaspora Poetry Festival, is the author of many poetry volumes, the most recent being We Are Not a Museum, winner of New York Book Festival award, and Exile is Not a Foreign Word.
Honorary Board Member
Lorraine Conlin is the Nassau County Poet Laureate Emeritus (2015-2017) Executive V.P. of the Nassau County Poet Lauret Society, Events Coordinator for Performance Poets Association and the Director of Program Development for the Long Island Writers Guild. She is a two-time winner of the Allan Ginsburg Poetry Contest. Her poems have been published nationally and internationally in anthologies and literary reviews. Lorraine is a U.S. Customs’ Broker, still working for a Global Logistics Company.
Board Member
Robert is a native Long Island poet, Suffolk County Poet Laureate 2015-2017, Bards Laureate 2019-2021, Board Member at the Walt Whitman Birthplace and at the Long Island Poetry & Literature Repository Center. He is the winner of the 2008 Oberon Poetry Prize, Association of Italian American Educators -- Cristoforo Colombo Award for Literary Leadership (2019), and Town of Islip Italian American Heritage Award for Visual & Performing Arts -- in Literature (2019).
Honorary Board member
Peter V. Dugan was the 2017-2019 Nassau County Poet Laureate. He is a graduate of Chaminade High School, Mineola 1976, Farmingdale State College, Melville, NY Degree: Associate of Arts and Sciences 1995, and The New School for Social Research, NY, NY. Degree: Bachelor of Arts. He has published five collections of poetry and over the years, his poetry has been published in numerous anthologies and magazines both on-line and in print.
Board Member
Barbara is a visual artist and writer living in Miller Place, New York. The titles of her three books are: Remember, published in 2008, Time & Space, published in 2020, and Long Island Poems, published 2022.
Honorary Board Member
Alan Semerdjian is an Armenian-American writer, a musician, and an educator. Recent recognitions include two Pushcart Prize nominations; a Frontier New Poets Award; poems in Poetry International, The Brooklyn Rail, Fence, Hanging Loose, and Mizna; and a tweet from Kim Kardashian that made his 2020 spoken word album The Serpent and The Crane (with Vancouver-based guitarist/composer Aram Bajakian) viral for a day. Alan's poem "The Writing About It Again" was part of a short, animated film (An Armenian Triptych: Retracing Our Steps, made in collaboration with Bajakian and international visual artist Kevork Mourad) that won honors in several film festivals. Pulitzer Prize winner Peter Balakian has called his first full-length poetry collection, In the Architecture of Bone (GenPop Books, 2009), “well worth your reading.” Alan has been teaching English in public schools for close to three decades winning accolades for his commitment to education while recording, releasing, and touring in support of several critically-acclaimed collections of music across a range of genres. He is on the advisory board for the International Armenian Literary Alliance, through which he founded and directs the Young Armenian Poets Awards and Standing on the Moon: The Lyrical Imagination. Alan is the current Poet Laureate of New York’s Nassau County, teaches at Herricks High School, and lives in New Hyde Park, NY with his partner and their son.
Honorary Board Member
Richard Bronson is an award-winning poet and author of five collections. He is also a board member of the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association and the Long Island Poetry Collective. Bronson is a faculty member at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, where he bridges medicine and the humanities.
LIP&LR's Literature Ambassador of Long Island 2026-2028
Paula Curci is the co-founder of the Acoustic Poets Network® LLC. She is the co-founder of the Poetry: It’s a Shore Thing!® open mic, and its Micro-Memoir Anthology. She is the producer of Calliope’s Corner & What’s the Buzz ® on WRHU.ORG and a Poet Correspondent for The Scene. Paula is a Journal to the Self® instructor and a Nassau County Poet Laureate Emerita. Her Posics® poetry and radio program can be found online.
Board Member
Deborah Hauser is the author of Ennui: From the Diagnostic and Statistical Field Guide of Feminine Disorders (Finishing Line Press). Her poems and book reviews have appeared in Ms. Magazine, Women’s Review of Books, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Bellevue Literary Review, Calyx, and Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, and elsewhere. She received a Pushcart Prize nomination from TAB: The Journal of Poetry and Poetics. She has taught literature and writing at Stony Brook University and Suffolk County Community College. She curates and hosts a monthly poetry reading series at for the Babylon Village Arts Council Jack Jack’s Coffee House.
Board Member
Chip is the director and co-host of Poetry Street, LILP&LR board member, also a member of Northport Arts Coalition and a Northport Arts Poetry Path Exhibit Sponsor, Ambassador for the poetry division of fuwimu.com (Fund With Music) Chip is a prose, poetry, and short story writer. He is a passionate equal rights advocate, filmmaker, documentarian, family historian, good listener, and relatable storyteller. For Chip's CV, please click on articles tab.
Honorary Board Member
(SAG-AFTRA, AEA) Greg is a professional actor, an award-winning director, professor, and published author. He is proud to announce the publication of his first full volume of poetry – Poetic Anarchy. His most recent chapbook, Summer Heat: Poems of Passion, was published in 2025 by Wyld Syde Press. His debut novel The Devil in the Diamond was released in 2023 by Henry Gray Publishing. Many of his stories have been archived in numerous libraries including Yale University’s Beinecke Collection (Rare Books and Manuscript Library). Greg is an Adjunct Professor of English at Long Island University, an Associate Professor of Literature & Composition at Post University, and he also teaches Creative Writing, Poetry, and Basic Acting at Nassau Community College. http://www.gandeproductions.com/
Editorial Board & Editorial Assistant
Mindy is an internationally published poet, writer, critic, and professor at SUNY Empire State University. She curates poetry selections for the Sculpture on the Trail arts event sponsored by the Center for Environmental Education and Discovery (CEED) and Inspiration Plus, Inc. She is the editor of Oberon poetry magazine and the author of Dismantling the Playground, Images of Miller Place, and Open.
Board Member
Anthony is a poet who writes in order to free the dove hiding under the hat of springtime. He lives in Oyster Bay, Long Island with his wife, daughter and King Charles Cavalier Spaniel (also, a female).
Board Member
Author, The Color Of Drowning Richard was born in Brooklyn New York, self-raised, self-taught. He does not write, he remembers. His pieces have been published in the journal of undiscovered poets, The Scene, Saving Ourselves by Dr Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan. He has published 4 books of poetry - Tales from the Orchard, Gifts from the Furnace, The Color of Drowning, Dancing in the Rain; and co-authored Her and His poems with Dr Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan. He was the first prize winner of the 2025 Long Beach Poetry Festival contest.
Board Member & Editorial Board
Author of Mostly Round, But Rough David is a clinical psychologist and poet, living and working on Long Island. Over the past 10 years, he has re-immersed himself in reading and writing poetry. His poems have been included in two Wyld Syde Press anthologies, To Be Completely Honest: A Poetry Collection of Self-Examination and All the Men Came & Danced.
Board Member
Board Member
Adam is the rabbi emeritus of Temple Isaiah, Stony Brook, NY is the author of numerous articles and two books of liturgy. He is also the author of a book of short fiction, and four books of poetry. He was the Poetry Editor of the CCAR Journal from 2006-2014.
Board Member
Editor of the Paumanok Trilogy Kathaleen is a graduate of St. Vincent’s School of Nursing in 1976, currently a Nurse Practitioner in Cardiology at Stony Brook University Hospital. Earned a M.A. in Philosophy while working 12 years in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit through the 1990’s. Single mother, son Keith. Opened and ran Whispering Wonders Child Care Center in Port Jefferson Village for 12 years. A member of the Sweetbriar Photography Club,
(7/29/42 – 11/30/24) Zikhrono Livrakha
Honorary Historian of LIP&LR
Robert L Harrison was the recipient of an APPRECIATION AWARD as HISTORIAN FOR THE LIP&LR (Long Island Poetry and Literature Repository) on May 30, 2024. He was a graduate of Hofstra and Stony Brook Universities.