Reaching Out<\/h3>\n![\"<p>Davyne](\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" "\\"Davyne")
<\/a>Davyne Verstandig teaches poetry to first and second graders at Kent Center elementary school. Photo by Linda Miller<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe Writers Project is well suited to Litchfield County, where there are \u201cmore professional writers per square inch than any other county in the United States,\u201d says Delaney\u2019s wife, Diane Meier, a novelist and owner of an advertising agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes an enormously courageous and audacious person to reach across the fence to say to William Styron \u2018surely you want to be a part of this project,\u2019 and Davyne does it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verstandig sees Litchfield County as a 21st century Bloomsbury and herself as the life force making the connections, adds Meier.<\/p>\n
The LCWP program consists of a 1,300-volume library with signed copies of works by Litchfield County authors \u2013 including the late Styron and the late Arthur Miller \u2013 and a display of photographs on loan from the Inga Morath Foundation. Morath was the wife of Miller and the mother of actress Rebecca Miller, also a part-time Litchfield County resident. The photographs focus on artists from Litchfield County.<\/p>\n
LCWP also offers courses each semester on writing and a well-attended public lecture series. After the program received a gift of $100,000 last year, it expanded to include gallery space, and has begun a new focus on the creative process and the visual arts.<\/p>\n
\u201cDavyne\u2019s support of local writers and artists is unparalleled,\u201d says Julia Bolus, a literary assistant working with Arthur Miller\u2019s papers, who is also a published poet and a teacher.<\/p>\n
Verstandig is not unlike the people she pursues as speakers for the program. She is a painter, published poet, playwright, and novelist, and has been a secondary school teacher and college professor.<\/p>\n
In 1995, she was hired at the Torrington Campus as an adjunct professor of English and soon began working on the Writers Project, since it was clear that Litchfield County is characterized by a high number of writers, and a project focusing on them would provide a way for the campus to distinguish itself.<\/p>\n
Verstandig\u2019s day includes an hour or more of reading \u2013 concentrating on Litchfield County authors, especially contemporary novels and memoirs \u2013 and time spent at Marty\u2019s Caf\u00e9 in Washington Depot, where many of the people she encounters are authors. One of them is Frank McCourt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela\u2019s Ashes<\/em> and \u2019Tis,<\/em> who has spoken several times for the LCWP.<\/p>\nOne of her jobs is to design a new writing course every semester. And always, she is writing. Several times a week, her day ends with dinner with local authors whom she invites to participate in the program.<\/p>\n
Connecting Writers and Readers<\/h3>\n
One of those writers is Roxana Robinson, who recalls that during one of her appearances at the Torrington Campus, she was introduced to a fan of her writing who had, with Verstandig\u2019s help, been flown in from out of town as a birthday present to meet the author.<\/p>\n
\u201cDavyne is very interested in the connection between writers and readers,\u201d says Robinson, novelist,biographer, and essayist, who has twice been part of the LCWP lecture series and has been interviewed on stage by Verstandig.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is a wonderful interlocutor,\u201d Robinson says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was struck by how much research she had done, and by how carefully she had read my work.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Varied Career<\/h3>\n
Originally from Hamden, Conn., Verstandig was educated in the South, receiving her master\u2019s degree from the University of Tennessee in the 1960s.<\/p>\n
Her time there includes many recollections indicative of the turmoil in the U.S. at the time.<\/p>\n
When she marched in a civil rights demonstration in Knoxville, she was spit on by whites.<\/p>\n
And when she asked permission to take a class in the Modern African Novel being taught at a local black college, she was refused. No credit could be given, she was told, for courses at such an \u201cinferior\u201d institution.<\/p>\n
She took the class anyway. When Robert Kennedy was assassinated, she knew she was done with the South.<\/p>\n
Heading home from college with her mother, the two were in a car accident that killed her mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything changed in that moment,\u201d Verstandig says, and rather than heading to New York to seek a job in publishing, she returned to Hamden.<\/p>\n
Someone suggested she might try teaching. Unaware that she needed a teaching license, she secured several jobs.<\/p>\n
She chose one in Shelton because the students were from blue-collar factory families, as different as possible from the students at her high school, Rosemary Hall, then located in Greenwich. She knew it would be a challenge.<\/p>\n
She also taught at Central Connecticut State University and Albertus Magnus College, at Newburgh Air Force base, and Fort Totten in Queens, N.Y.<\/p>\n
And she directed and acted in plays at the Creative Arts Center \u2013 now Theaterworks \u2013 in New Milford, Sherman Playhouse, and Dramalights in Washington, Conn.<\/p>\n
She eventually opened a book store in Washington Depot, and later in Warren, Conn.<\/p>\n
It was her hairdresser, a UConn Bachelor of General Studies student, who recommended she teach at the Torrington Campus.<\/p>\n
Today, Verstandig sits in her office there under one of her acrylic paintings \u2013 a three foot by five foot abstract that proclaims, \u201cObstacles are the vehicles by which we move forward.\u201d She notes that at age 64, she has no plans to retire.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeaching is the best profession there is,\u201d she says. \u201cEvery day, one can make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Verstandig was hired at the Torrington Campus as an adjunct professor of English and soon began working on the Writers Project, since it was clear that Litchfield County is characterized by a high number of writers, and a project focusing on them would provide a way for the campus to distinguish itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[61],"class_list":["post-1838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 07:32:10","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1838"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36599,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions\/36599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1838"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=1838"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"<p>Davyne](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/Torrington_writers_lg.jpg\" "\\"Davyne")
<\/a>The Writers Project is well suited to Litchfield County, where there are \u201cmore professional writers per square inch than any other county in the United States,\u201d says Delaney\u2019s wife, Diane Meier, a novelist and owner of an advertising agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes an enormously courageous and audacious person to reach across the fence to say to William Styron \u2018surely you want to be a part of this project,\u2019 and Davyne does it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verstandig sees Litchfield County as a 21st century Bloomsbury and herself as the life force making the connections, adds Meier.<\/p>\n
The LCWP program consists of a 1,300-volume library with signed copies of works by Litchfield County authors \u2013 including the late Styron and the late Arthur Miller \u2013 and a display of photographs on loan from the Inga Morath Foundation. Morath was the wife of Miller and the mother of actress Rebecca Miller, also a part-time Litchfield County resident. The photographs focus on artists from Litchfield County.<\/p>\n
LCWP also offers courses each semester on writing and a well-attended public lecture series. After the program received a gift of $100,000 last year, it expanded to include gallery space, and has begun a new focus on the creative process and the visual arts.<\/p>\n
\u201cDavyne\u2019s support of local writers and artists is unparalleled,\u201d says Julia Bolus, a literary assistant working with Arthur Miller\u2019s papers, who is also a published poet and a teacher.<\/p>\n
Verstandig is not unlike the people she pursues as speakers for the program. She is a painter, published poet, playwright, and novelist, and has been a secondary school teacher and college professor.<\/p>\n
In 1995, she was hired at the Torrington Campus as an adjunct professor of English and soon began working on the Writers Project, since it was clear that Litchfield County is characterized by a high number of writers, and a project focusing on them would provide a way for the campus to distinguish itself.<\/p>\n
Verstandig\u2019s day includes an hour or more of reading \u2013 concentrating on Litchfield County authors, especially contemporary novels and memoirs \u2013 and time spent at Marty\u2019s Caf\u00e9 in Washington Depot, where many of the people she encounters are authors. One of them is Frank McCourt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela\u2019s Ashes<\/em> and \u2019Tis,<\/em> who has spoken several times for the LCWP.<\/p>\n One of her jobs is to design a new writing course every semester. And always, she is writing. Several times a week, her day ends with dinner with local authors whom she invites to participate in the program.<\/p>\n One of those writers is Roxana Robinson, who recalls that during one of her appearances at the Torrington Campus, she was introduced to a fan of her writing who had, with Verstandig\u2019s help, been flown in from out of town as a birthday present to meet the author.<\/p>\n \u201cDavyne is very interested in the connection between writers and readers,\u201d says Robinson, novelist,biographer, and essayist, who has twice been part of the LCWP lecture series and has been interviewed on stage by Verstandig.<\/p>\n \u201cShe is a wonderful interlocutor,\u201d Robinson says.<\/p>\n \u201cI was struck by how much research she had done, and by how carefully she had read my work.\u201d<\/p>\n Originally from Hamden, Conn., Verstandig was educated in the South, receiving her master\u2019s degree from the University of Tennessee in the 1960s.<\/p>\n Her time there includes many recollections indicative of the turmoil in the U.S. at the time.<\/p>\n When she marched in a civil rights demonstration in Knoxville, she was spit on by whites.<\/p>\n And when she asked permission to take a class in the Modern African Novel being taught at a local black college, she was refused. No credit could be given, she was told, for courses at such an \u201cinferior\u201d institution.<\/p>\n She took the class anyway. When Robert Kennedy was assassinated, she knew she was done with the South.<\/p>\n Heading home from college with her mother, the two were in a car accident that killed her mother.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything changed in that moment,\u201d Verstandig says, and rather than heading to New York to seek a job in publishing, she returned to Hamden.<\/p>\n Someone suggested she might try teaching. Unaware that she needed a teaching license, she secured several jobs.<\/p>\n She chose one in Shelton because the students were from blue-collar factory families, as different as possible from the students at her high school, Rosemary Hall, then located in Greenwich. She knew it would be a challenge.<\/p>\n She also taught at Central Connecticut State University and Albertus Magnus College, at Newburgh Air Force base, and Fort Totten in Queens, N.Y.<\/p>\n And she directed and acted in plays at the Creative Arts Center \u2013 now Theaterworks \u2013 in New Milford, Sherman Playhouse, and Dramalights in Washington, Conn.<\/p>\n She eventually opened a book store in Washington Depot, and later in Warren, Conn.<\/p>\n It was her hairdresser, a UConn Bachelor of General Studies student, who recommended she teach at the Torrington Campus.<\/p>\n Today, Verstandig sits in her office there under one of her acrylic paintings \u2013 a three foot by five foot abstract that proclaims, \u201cObstacles are the vehicles by which we move forward.\u201d She notes that at age 64, she has no plans to retire.<\/p>\n \u201cTeaching is the best profession there is,\u201d she says. \u201cEvery day, one can make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Verstandig was hired at the Torrington Campus as an adjunct professor of English and soon began working on the Writers Project, since it was clear that Litchfield County is characterized by a high number of writers, and a project focusing on them would provide a way for the campus to distinguish itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[61],"class_list":["post-1838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 07:32:10","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1838"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36599,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions\/36599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1838"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=1838"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Connecting Writers and Readers<\/h3>\n
A Varied Career<\/h3>\n