Advisory Board

The Board of Advisors is comprised of individuals who can offer expertise and leadership in areas of education, community outreach, fundraising, marketing and financial management. The Board is charged with the responsibility to preserve and expand the collection of works by Litchfield County writers.

Davyne Verstandig - Director

Davyne Verstandig is a lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the UConn Torrington Campus.  She is also Director of the Litchfield County Writers Project.  She has published two books of poetry, Pieces of the Whole and Provisions and has performed improvisational work “composing on the tongue” while simultaneously painting. Her poetry has appeared in The Connecticut Review and Hobo Jungle. She has performed her work throughout New England and at The Knitting Factory and Housing Works Cafe in New York City. Her website is davyneverstandig.com

Diane Cassidy

Diane Cassidy is the manager of the Co-op bookstore at the UConn Torrington campus.  In addition to her textbook experience at the Co-op, she has several years experience in trade bookstores as well as in children’s publishing.  Her educational background is in geology with a specialization in science policy.  Having been born and raised in Litchfield County, she moved back to the area after living in Kenya and several other states in the U.S.  She finds Litchfield County a beautiful place to live and work. 

Donald S. Connery

A Kent resident, World War II veteran and Harvard College graduate, Donald Connery is an author and independent journalist whose career began in the early 1940s. Working in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Soviet Union as a foreign correspondent for Time & Life magazines, he reported such Cold War events as the flight of the Dalai Lama from Tibet and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis as seen in Moscow. His six books include The Scandinavians, The Irish and Guilty Until Proven Innocent, the definitive account of Litchfield County’s famous Peter Reilly “wrong man” case. He is currently writing a history of miscarriages of justice.

Jeffrey Coploff

Jeffrey L. Coploff is an attorney with Kelly & Trevenen, LLC in Washington Depot, Connecticut. Since 1985, he has represented clients in a broad range of commercial and other business disputes, including cases involving real estate, employment, insurance, and intellectual property.

From 1995 to 2004, Jeff also owned and operated Jeffrey Coploff Fine Art Ltd., a gallery located in the Chelsea Art District in New York City. The Gallery specialized in contemporary painting and works on paper by emerging and mid-career artists.

Jeff’s practice at Kelly & Trevenen focuses on general business litigation, construction matters, real estate, estate planning, employment law, general corporate work, and business transactions. He holds a B.A. in Art History from New York University and a J.D. from Columbia University, where he was an editor on the Columbia Journal of Art & the Law. Jeff is admitted to the Connecticut and New York State Bars.

Jane Darby

Jane Darby lived in New York City for twenty-five years, where she taught in elementary schools. It was during this time that she began to write articles, essays, and short stories. She is now a resident of Litchfield County where she continues to teach and write. Her most recent work has appeared in Lynx Eye and Washington Square Review.

Anna Mae Duane

Anna Mae Duane is an assistant professor of English at the UConn Torrington campus. She has published articles on early American and antebellum literature, and is currently working on a book exploring representations of suffering children in early America.

Fran Keilty

Fran Keilty is co-owner of the Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot, Connecticut, with her husband Michael. She is currently president of the Independent Booksellers Consortium. She was general manager of Atticus Bookstores for 30 years. She was past president and served on the strategic planning committee of the New England Booksellers Association. Former member of the Region #6 Board of Education for sixteen years.

Sheila A. Lafferty - Vice Chair

Sheila Lafferty is the director at the Julia Brooker Thompson Library, University of Connecticut Torrington Campus. Prior to working at the Torrington Campus, she worked at the library at the Waterbury Campus. Sheila is responsible for selecting books, journals and electronic resources; providing in-depth research assistance and library instruction; and acting as the advocate within the Torrington Library for all Undergraduate Programs at the University of Connecticut Torrington Campus.

John Long

John Long is a lecturer in Drama and Film at UConn-Torrington. He recently produced, wrote, and directed the documentary Pursuit of Precision which won a Gold Aurora Award and has been broadcast on CPTV. He founded and produced the Connecticut One-Act Play Festival at the historic Warner Theatre in Torrington. A member of the Dramatists Guild, his plays include Collinsville and You Might As Well Live.

Jaime Makuc - Secretary

Jaime Makuc works at the State Capitol as a legislative aide to State Senator Andrew Roraback. Prior to her employment at the State Capitol beginning in 2001, Jaime was a student at the University of Connecticut where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in English in 2000. She is currently serving her first term on the Litchfield County Writer's Project.

Dimitri Rimsky

Dimitri Rimsky has lived in Washington, CT since 1950, and has over the years participated in many town civic organizations as well as a board member of the Washington Art Association, and is currently on theTown Planning Commission. He has been an entertainment agent, street mime, graphic designer, house painter and occasional poet. Dimitri is currently a web developer and freelance designer.

William P Suter

Co-Productions include Night Mother (Pulitzer Prize winner), Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (nominated for three Tony Awards including Best Play and won the New york Critic's Drama Desk Award for Best Play), Hurly burly (nominated for four Tony Awards including Best Play; Judith Ivey on for Best Featured Actress), directed by Mike Nichols, and Redwood Curtain (nominated for two Tony Awards; Deborah Monk won for Best Featured Actress) ; Deborah Monk (won for Best Featured Actress). Off Broadway: Sex, Drugs, rock & Roll, written and performed by eric Bogosian (winner: award for Best Solo Performance) and the revival of The Hairy Ape starring Willem Dafoe. Mr Suter has also produced plays in London: breaking the Silence and Camille with the Royal Shakespeare company and glengarry Geln ross with the National Theater Company.

In Los Angeles he produced Hurly Burly starrring Sean Penn and Danny Aiello and co-produced Fully Committed and The Vagina Monologues. His musical, Chasing Nicolette, premiered at the Westport (CT) Playhouse in 2000. His new musical, Mask, is in development. Mr. Suter holds a B. A. (cum laude) degree from Brown University along with a M.B.A. from Harvard University. On Wall Street, he held various positions including that of Partner at Jesup & Lamont, Vice President and Board Member of Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., and Managing Director for Merrill Lynch, Inc. He is a longtime Board Member and the Vice-Chairman of TriArts at the Sharon Playhouse in Sharon, CT.

Gerry Van Doren

Geraldine Van Doren has taught English and humanities at the University of Illinois, Roosevelt University, and the University of Connecticut. She has also been a seminar leader at the Aspen Institute. During her 10 years as a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Philosophical Research, she was a co-author of The Paideia Program (Macmillan, 1984), and editor and compiler of Reforming Education, by Mortimer J. Adler (Macmillan, 1988). She has written on numerous topics including education, equality, and imitation in the arts.

Robley Whitson

Robley Whitson is a distinguished writer and artist in Litchfield County.  His academic career has included positions as dean of faculty and distinguished professor of anthropology of religion and President Emeritus of the Graduate Theological Foundation in South Bend, Indiana.  Earlier, he was chair of the Fordham University Department of Theology, taught anthropology of religion at the Hartford Seminary Foundation, and was Visiting Scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary and planning board member of The Princeton World Religions Project.  Among his books in this field are The Coming Convergence of World Religions, Mysticism and Ecumenism, and The Shakers, Two Centuries of Spiritual Reflection.

            As a writer and artist he has produced a large body of work, both poetry and pictures now in the collection of the Litchfield County Writers and Artists Project.  The poetry and pictures (executed in opaque inks as a new form of ink-paintings) are together conceived as poetry: poems in words together with poems-without-words.  Among his published works are five books of poetry and drawings: Poeming Elusion, Mytholog, Miro Mirror; Missa Solemnis, Lotus Sutra Poems.  A book of the poems-without-words ink paintings is currently in the development stage.