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John Cusatis received his BA in English with a concentration in non-fiction and fiction writing from Penn State University (1985) and a teaching certificate from Wilkes University (1987). He earned an MA in English from Millersville University (1990), concentrating on British literature and linguistics. His master's thesis, completed under the direction of Dr. Kenneth Shields, was titled "The Nature of Modern Slang" and attempted not only to define slang, but also to illustrate its role in helping to delineate eight teenage sub-cultures that existed at Cedar Crest High School in Lebanon, PA, where he was teaching English at the time. In 1993 Dr. Cusatis moved to Johns Island, SC and began teaching English and journalism at St. John's High School, where he started a school newspaper, Islander Pride, SAT remediation classes, and built a boys track team, which won the SC State Championship during his second year of coaching (1995).Cusatis was named South Carolina Boys Track Coach of the Year. In 1996, he enrolled in the University of South Carolina to begin work on a doctorate in linguistics, researching the Gullah dialect with Dr. Michael Montgomery. Dr. Cusatis resigned from his teaching position in 1997 to work full-time on his degree, while performing music along the east coast to make a living. That year he released a full-length cd of original recordings, April Days. In the spring of 1999 he began an in-depth study of the work of Robinson Jeffers in a course titled Modern Primitive Poets and changed his major to 20th Century American literature with a minor in linguistics, specifically "Dialects of American English." After presenting a paper about Jeffers and Willa Cather at the Robinson Jeffers Association Conference in Taos, New Mexico, he settled on Jeffers as the topic for his doctoral dissertation, "The Life I could Write: The Personal and Artistic Integrity of Robinson Jeffers," and completed his PhD in Spring 2003. In the meantime, Dr. Cusatis began teaching English and journalism at the School of the Arts, a public arts magnet school in Charleston, SC, founded a few years earlier by arts-in-education champion Rose Maree Myers, who had pioneered the internationally renowned Ashley River Creative Arts Elementary School in Charleston in 1984. Intending to stay there while he completed his doctoral studies, he relished the opportunity to teach with the creative, energetic, and devoted Mrs. Myers, whose school has gone on to be ranked among the finest in the nation and the second best in the state of South Carolina, according to the 2012 US News and World Report study. Dr. Cusatis taught Advanced Placement English Literature to the first graduating class in 2001 and has taught that course to each of the succeeding classes, who have maintained a passing rate of nearly 95% over the past eleven years. Enrollment in this class has gone from 13 to more than 50 students per year. He also began a school newspaper, Applause, which published its 100th volume in March 2012. Another great educator and scholar that Dr. Cusatis had the good fortune of working with during this time was Dr. Matthew J. Bruccoli, whose course "The Profession of Authorship" Cusatis entered in Fall 1998. Cusatis worked closely with Dr. Bruccoli, writing dozens of articles for such award-winning publications as The Students Guide to American Literary Characters, The Encyclopedia of American Literature, and the Dictionary of Literary Biography, which Dr. Bruccoli edited. In 2007 he began work on his first book, Understanding Colum McCann, also under Bruccoli's editorship. In 2010 the McCann study, the first written about the 2009 National Book Award-winner, was published, as was Cusatis's Post War Literature, 1945-1970, which was named a "Best Reference Book of 2011" by School Library Journal. His articles on some two dozen American writers -including songwriters-have appeared in several books and journals. In 2011 Cusatis was appointed Executive Director of the Robinson Jeffers Association. He is currently editing a two- volume edition of the Dictionary of Literary Biography, titled Contemporary American Poets, which will include approximately two dozen interviews with major American poets conducted by his students at the School of the Arts over the past three years.

Phone: (843) 452-2252
e-mail: John Cusatis
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