Faces of Long Island celebrates the uniqueness of everyday Long Islanders. In their own words, they tell us about their life experiences, challenges and triumphs. Newsday launched this social media journey into the human experience to shine a light on the diverse people of this wonderful place we call home.

‘I still have a loss from my dad, but I’m able to deal with it better through writing.’

East Islip

“My dad was a huge influence on me. He was a teacher in Brentwood for 28 years. He was an inspiration to a lot of students and he was always encouraging me to write. We’d see a movie together and he’d say, ‘You can’t write anything better than that?’ I wrote a play, and he was supportive of that. He was supportive of me entering play competitions, one of which I won for. He was supportive of my Disney Screenwriting Fellowship.

“He was the Long Island Ducks public address announcer, a teacher and a longtime radio DJ for WGLI and WGBB. They built this incredible block around him and a few other guys. Then he went into teaching and had a family and he ended up running the radio station at Brentwood High School.

“I teach English and English-as-a-new-language at the high school level in Great Neck and to adults to take the high school equivalency class. Teaching English as a new language is so rewarding. I’ve never had students who work harder trying to learn a new language.

Horror is cathartic – I exercised a lot of fears with my second book and a lot of my emotions with my first book.

“I came out of college and I was a journalist, covering the Long Island serial killer for a couple years and then I started producing a podcast called “Voices from Gilgo” and I’m doing a library lecture series about the killer. That started at the end of my father’s life. He was in-and-out of the hospital, and I was doing this podcast to take my mind off of it. He was encouraging of that too. Even when I would see him at the rehab facility, he’d ask me about it and say, ‘That’s great, good luck, be safe.’

“When he passed away, I was having a really hard time. I was very broken with his passing; thanks to therapy I’m a lot stronger than I was. I needed to have an outlet for my heartache, so I put together a group of short fiction horror stories that I published under my own publishing company, Spooky House Press.

“Horror is cathartic – I exercised a lot of fears with my second book and a lot of my emotions with my first book. I still have a loss from my dad, but I’m able to deal with it better through writing.”

Interviewed by Rachel O’Brien – Morano

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