From popular fiction to scholarly research, Montclair State University alumni are making names for themselves in the publishing industry, garnering awards and critical acclaim along the way. The writing careers of featured authors Danilo Figueredo ’76, Fred Misurella ’62, Firth Haring Fabend ’79 M.A., Dave White ’05 M.A.T. and Patrick J. Gallo ’59, and the list of titles from the alumni bookshelf give us a sampling of the broad range of works that Montclair State graduates have explored: fiction, history, children’s books, memoirs, mysteries and much more.

Danilo Figueredo ’76

Danilo (Dan) Figueredo, who writes as D. H. Figueredo, is a prolific, award-winning author who has turned out children’s books, histories, short stories and reference works including the two-volume, 1,016-page Encyclopedia of Caribbean Literature (Greenwood Press), for which he was honored with a medal from the president of St. Martin University in the Caribbean.  He is also the co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Cuba (Greenwood Press). His latest and 11th book is A Brief History of the Caribbean (Facts on File).

Figueredo, who is director of the Library and Media Center at Bloomfield College, also has a less academic side and has written two children’s books and The Complete Idiot’s Guide® to Latino History and Culture (Alpha). He credits retired Montclair State English professor George Petty for being an inspiration and a mentor during his early years of writing. “I still remember his lessons,” says Figueredo: “Keep it true, keep it interesting, be yourself and watch your diction.”

Fred Misurella ’62

A writer, Fulbright Scholar and professor of English at East Stroudsburg University, Fred Misurella has published fiction and non-fiction in numerous journals and newspapers including The New York Times and The Village Voice, as well as written the book, Lies to Live By (Bordighera Press), a collection of short stories.  He has also published a novella, Short Time (Bordighera Press), and critical essays in two books on Primo Levi, the Italian author.

Misurella, who earned an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, teaches writing, journalism, and Italian American literature and is a lover of most things French or Italian. He has been doing readings from Lies to Live By in and around New York for the past year and is hoping to have his next novel, An Average, Sensual Man, published soon.

Firth Haring Fabend ’79 M.A.

“I’ve always been associated with words,” says Firth Haring Fabend. “I started out in high school writing news articles and features for the school newspaper.” After college, she spent the next 14 years in book publishing, editing a total of about 70 college textbooks.  During those years, she also wrote and published her first three novels.  Fabend, who’s most recent and sixth novel is Land So Fair (iUniverse), an historical novel set in colonial-era New York and New Jersey, has a Ph.D. in American Studies from NYU and is a leading historian of Dutch American culture.

Between her first three novels and Land So Fair, she wrote critically acclaimed histories including Zion on the Hudson: Dutch New York and New Jersey in the Age of Revivals (Rutgers University Press) and A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies, 1660-1800 (Rutgers University Press), which was awarded the Hendricks Prize from the New Netherland Project. “In Land So Fair,” she says, “I went back to fiction to write an historical novel, which combines the two strands in my career—novelist and historian.”

Dave White ’05 M.A.T.

Award-winning writer Dave White is the author of the critically acclaimed mystery-detective novels When One Man Dies and The Evil That Men Do (Three Rivers Press), and has contributed to many anthologies and collections, including The Adventure of the Missing Detective (Carroll & Graf) and Damn Near Dead (Busted Flush Press).

White, who grew up in Clifton, N.J., and now teaches there, started writing and submitting short stories to writers’ Web sites and soon began being noticed.  He has been nominated for several awards and won the Derringer Award for Best Short Mystery Story for his work “Closure” in 2003.  His two novels feature a fictional ex-cop-turned-private-investigator, Jackson Donne, and are both set in New Jersey, primarily in White’s old undergraduate stomping grounds of New Brunswick.

Patrick J. Gallo ’59

Pius XII, the Holocaust and the Revisionists: Essays (McFarland) is Patrick J. Gallo’s latest and 11th work. A Fulbright Scholar and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, Gallo has taught high school, been a scholar-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome and is currently an adjunct professor at New York University. His many other publications include The American Paradox: Politics and Justice (Howard University Press), Old Bread, New Wine: A Portrait of the Italian Americans (Nelson Hall) and Enemies: Mussolini and the Antifascists (Xlibris  Corporation). In addition to his books, Gallo contributes to periodicals in the United States and abroad.

Gallo began writing because of the encouragement he received from a high school English teacher.  His first short story was well received by his classmates and he decided to pursue writing in earnest. “Interestingly,” he notes, “my entire writing career has been writing nonfiction. I do have an idea for a novel and will venture forth … very soon.”

 

Alumni   Bookshelf

Recently published books by alumni are available at a bookstore near you. Check out these titles:

• A Camouflaged Fragrance of Decency (Inkwater Press) by Tim Josephs ’03

• Coming of Age in a Globalized World: The Next Generation (Kumarian Publications) by J. Michael Adams and Angelo Carfagna ’89

• For Gloria, Wherever You Are: A Novel (PublishAmerica) by Edward Buhrer ’71 ’83 M.A.

• Glory Days (Zebra) by Irene Ceccato Peterson ’71

• Hachi-Ko: The Samurai Dog (PublishAmerica) by Shizuko Obo Koster ’70

• My Tom, A Memoir (R.W. Morgan Press) by Ruth Morgan ’50 ’60 M.A.

• Overkill: The Rise and Fall of Thriller Cinema (McFarland & Company) by Bill Mesce, Jr. ’93 M.A.

• The Atheist Syndrome (Wolgemuth & Hyatt Publishers) by John Koster ’67

• The Inferno Collection (Five Star) by Jacqueline Seewald ’66

• The Sacred Bones (Harper) by Michael Byrnes ’93

The Office of Alumni and Community Relations welcomes news from alumni about recent publications or anything else! Please send your news to alumni@mail.montclair.edu.