Nassau County Poet Laureate for 2009-2011, Gayl Teller received an MA from Columbia University and another MA from Queens College, CUNY. Her poetry collections are At the Intersection of Everything You Have Ever Loved, Shorehaven, Moving Day,  One Small Kindness, and most recently, Inside the Embrace, which was selected in national competition and published by WordTech/Cherry Grove in 2010. Director and founder of the Poetry Reading Series, under the auspices of the New York State Council on the Arts, at the Mid-Island Y JCC, in Plainview, NY, for the past sixteen years, she reviews the works of feature poets and judges the annual poetry contest for adults, teens, and children. She has been teaching in the English department and Writing Studies and Composition department of Hofstra University since 1985. As Nassau County Poet Laureate, she originated "Stray Feet," a roving poetry show visiting high schools and middle schools, senior and rehab centers, and libraries in Nassau County, and in 2010, her workshops/anthology project "A Poetry of Forgiveness" was awarded a New York State Council on the Arts' LI Decentralization Grant for the Arts, which has facilitated her editing Toward Forgiveness, a poetry anthology of 99 LI poets, to be published by Writers Ink Press, in November 2010. She has conducted numerous poetry workshops and seminars and been the feature reader at many universities, poetry centers, and libraries. Her work has received the Edgar Allan Poe Prize, the Peninsula Library Poetry Prize, a National Federation of State Poetry Societies Prize, a National League of American PEN Women Prize, and The Connecticut Writer Prize; One Small Kindness was a finalist for the Blue Light Poetry Prize. Her poems are widely published and anthologized, and her reviews of poetry books have appeared frequently in Small Press Review. Her website is www.gaylteller.com.

LI Decentralization Grant For the Arts Awarded To Local Artist - Click To Read