Deanna Shapiro - Biography

I am a poet and painter, born in the Bronx, New York City, the child of an accountant/comptroller and a housewife. As a youngster books and libraries enchanted me. The musty upstate library in Grahamsville, New York where my family summered provided me with books like Anne of Green Gables, Mr. Popper's Penguins and Cheaper by the Dozen which I read in my attic room, sometimes at night under the covers with a flashlight. I shepherded my kindergarten-age brother to the library around the corner from our apartment building in the Bronx, to see to it that he got a library card as soon as he could sign his name. In college, the New York Public Library at 42nd Street in Manhattan was home for my research papers as an English Literature major at Hunter College, from which I graduated, cum laude, and for research for graduate degrees in education and psychology.

Art was another early passion for me. I spent my allowance on pads, charcoal and pencils at the local art supply store and my penny collection on a set of oils at Macy's. I followed Jon Gnagy art classes on early TV and enjoyed many craft projects from the local hobby shop.

In my early adult years I pursued careers as a kindergarten teacher and school psychologist in New York City and Westchester County school systems. It wasn't until my forties that I began interviewing family members and writing essays about my Jewish immigrant family.

At the same time, I began studying art seriously at local art schools, including Manhattanville College, Purchase College, Parsons School of Design, Silvermine School of Art, and The Art Students League among others.

In 1998, when I moved to Vermont I joined the Otter Creek Poetry Workshop and found free verse to be a concise, expressive way to use my voice. Since then I have become a member of The League of Vermont Writers and the Poetry Society of Vermont. I have been published in The Aurorean, The Penwood Review, Poetica, The Jewish Women's Literary Annual The League of Vermont Writer's 75th Anniversary Anthology: Vermont Voices Jubilee, Tapestries, Drash: A Northwest Mosaic, Burlington Poetry Journal, and The Mountain Troubadour, a publication of the Poetry Society of Vermont where I am the winner of the Arthur Wallace Pead Memorial Award for 2009. I was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

In the art world I have exhibited my paintings both in Westchester County and Vermont. In Westchester I exhibited in juried and annual art shows including The Gallery at the Macy Pavilion, Westchester County Medical Center; Westchester Art Workshop Juried Exhibition; Annual Northern Westchester Invitational Exhibition; The Studio Upstairs and Croton Council on the Arts exhibits. I was director of Miracle of Art, a private art program for children, parents and children, and psychiatric outpatients. This included lectures and workshops for parents and teachers. I curated art exhibits for the Croton Council on the Arts, chaired an annual Art Sale for Temple Israel of Northern Westchester and participated on arts-in-education conference advisory committees.

After moving to Vermont I was a member artist of the Ferrisburgh Artisans Guild and exhibited my work, some of which were solo shows, at Café Mocha, the South Burlington Art Hop, the Bixby Library, the Charlotte Library, the Charlotte Senior Center, the Starry Night Café, the Ilsley Library, Abel & Lovely, and the Jackson Gallery at Town Hall Theater. Currently, I work in mixed media on paper and canvas and make floorcloths.

I was also a mediator specializing in neighborhood and parent/child disputes in Westchester, Putnam and Orange Counties in New York and am an ordained interfaith minister.
I have two grown daughters and live in the Champlain Valley of Vermont with my husband, Charlie, who has an amazing vegetable garden he shares with the community.