Keynote Speakers

Friday Dinner Keynote Speaker: Donna Stuccio

Donna Stuccio is a graduate of Syracuse University’s Drama Department and the MFA Creative Writing program at Goddard College. She is a long-standing member of Armory Square Playhouse and currently serves as president. Her full length plays, Blue Moon, The Job, and elegy in blue have had full productions on Central New York stages. Her short play “Heart Burn” was performed at the Kitchen Theater in Ithaca as part of their 48 Hour Play Fest. In 2010, she was selected to attend the Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive led by Gary Garrison. At Philadelphia’s PlayPenn, she studied with Paula Vogel, Lee Blessing, Steven Dietz and Craig Lucas. Her plays are published in The Journal of Women and Criminal Justice, The Pitkin Review, and online at YouthPlays. Also an actress and former dancer, she has appeared on numerous stages throughout Central New York, beginning with Syracuse Stage in 1974. Donna is currently chair of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Department at Onondaga Community College. She spent ten years as a police officer and sometimes entertains her students and anyone else who will listen, as most former cops do, with stories of her time on the street. She is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild of America.

Friday Dinner Keynote Speaker: Kathy Kramer

Kathy Kramer has been involved in theater since moving to Central New York nearly 25 years ago. As a founding member of 3rd Floor Productions in Ithaca, she has worked in many aspects of theater—playwriting, acting, directing, producing, and stage crew. Her full-length plays have been performed at the Kitchen Theatre and several other venues in Ithaca. A one-act, Hearts of Clover, was a finalist in Ohio State University’s Eileen Heckart Competition and a winner in the Arts/West Competition in Athens, Ohio. Among her site-specific plays, two were chosen for Asphalt Jungle Shorts, a festival in Ontario,Canada. Numerous short works have been presented as readings by Armory Square Playhouse, Wolf’s Mouth Theater Collective and Auburn Players Second Stage. Her one act, Sleeps Through Storms, was produced by Theatre Incognita in Ithaca.

Friday Dinner Keynote Speaker: Len Fonte

Len Fonte has directed more than forty productions, including the world premieres of Jeff Kramer’s Lowdown Lies and Reaching For Marsby. As a playwright, his works include Melagrana, produced by CNY Playhouse; 2009 SALT Award winner Werewolf, produced by Rarely Done Productions; Wasted Bread, produced by Armory Square Playhouse; Hip/Shake (co-author with Reenah Golden) for Syracuse Stage Backstory program; the book for the musical Road Trip, and several comedy murder mysteries. The 2009 New York International Fringe Festival included his Alchemist of Light, which he co-authored with Tom Bisky. In 2010, Len was accepted into the Kennedy Center Playwrights Intensive. He has presented workshops on teaching Shakespeare and directing and producing scholastic theater. At the first Syracuse Area Live Theatre Youth awards (SALTYs), Len was voted Best Director, Distinguished Educator, and was presented the Lifetime Achievement Award. He is an adjunct instructor at SUNY Oswego and the Syracuse University Department of Drama and a theater critic for the Syracuse Post-Standard. Len is a founding member of Armory Square Playhouse.

Friday Dinner Keynote Speaker: Peter Moller

Peter Moller is recently retired from Syracuse University’s
Newhouse School of Public Communications where he taught for
more than twenty-five years. He is the co-author of MAKING
TELEVISION PROGRAMS and HURRY UP AND WAIT. He is a
founding member of the playwrights’ collective, Armory Square
Playhouse where many of his plays have had staged readings. His
plays Coupons, A Murder of Crows, The Experiment of St. Alexis
and Sangrado have been produced in Philadelphia, Syracuse and
Chicago. Recent films he wrote, directed and produced include: An
Obligation to Freedom, The Story of David Ifshin (Syracuse
University Tully Center for the First Amendment, 2007-2008) and
No Limitations. Recently he fulfilled a life time dream: to play the
part of Erronius in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the
Forum.

Saturday Luncheon Keynote Speaker: Dr. Brian Fallon

Brian Fallon is the founding director of the Writing Studio at the Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY, where he established the college’s first writing center program and grew it into a communication across the disciplines program. He recently developed a series of NEA grant-supported workshops for adjunct faculty at FIT focused on translingual approaches to teaching writing and preparing students to communicate in a linguistically diverse world. His current research agenda focuses on writing center work in Germany and how writing and language centers are coping with the increasing numbers of refugee students matriculating into German universities. He has delivered keynote addresses at the 2011 National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing (NCPTW) and the 2015 Gulf Coast Student Success Conference, in addition to speaking on writing center work at a number of campuses in the NYC metro area and across the country. A copy of his 2011 NCPTW keynote address was recently published in Fitzgerald and Ianetta’s The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors. Brian received the 2010 Ron Maxwell Award for distinguished leadership in promoting the collaborative learning practices of peer tutors in writing and co-won the 2007 IWCA scholarship award for an outstanding article.

Brian currently serves as the NCPTW treasurer, which he helped establish as a non-profit organization in 2015. In addition to his post as treasurer, he has been an active member of NCPTW’s steering committee as a conference organizer since 2002. Brian co-chaired the International Writing Centers Association/National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing 2014 joint conference and was a leader at the 2012 and 2013 International Writing Center Association’s (IWCA) Summer Institute for Writing Center Directors and Professionals. As co-host of the 2012 SUNY Council on Writing conference, he helped demonstrate FIT’s commitment to teaching writing to an audience of writing scholars and teachers from the SUNY system and beyond. He also served as the president of the NYC Metropolitan Affiliate of the Council of Writing Program Administrators. Brian is a member of the IWCA, NCPTW, Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, and National Education Association.