Gwenn A. Nusbaum Scholarship

Gwenn A. Nusbaum, Scholarship Founder

Gwenn is grateful for her role as Founder of the Gwenn A. Nusbaum Scholarship as well as to be on the Board of Trustees at Walt Whitman Birthplace Association. She is also on the Board of Directors at the Whitman Initiative in lower Manhattan. Gwenn is a member of the Marie Bullock Society of the American Academy of Poets.

After earning a B.A. in Psychology from Hofstra University, Gwenn received a Master of Social Work from New York University, and postgraduate certifications in several areas of therapeutic interventions. She is published in the field of individual and group psychotherapy with women having histories of childhood sexual traumas. She also presented her writing on this theme at the International Ferenczi Conference in Budapest, Hungary, as well as created curriculum and trainings for other professionals.

In addition, she developed the craft of writing poetry through an ongoing independent program inclusive of conferences and intensive craft workshops, including the comprehensive ones offered by Ellen Bass.

Gwenn’s poems have appeared widely in print and on-line poetry journals for which she received a Pushcart Nomination, Honorary Mention, and Gradiva Nomination. Her chapbook of poetry, “Normal War,” is archived at The Poet’s House in Manhattan.

Retired from her 40-year career as a psychoanalyst, Gwenn continues to foster personal and creative development via her coaching and mentoring practice. She is an Amherst Writers and Artists Certified Workshop leader and incorporated this non-hierarchical method of facilitating writing in a group for vets.

At the 2025 Gwenn A. Nusbaum Scholarship Awards, Gwenn discussed Walt Whitman’s enduring influence and the subject of AI: “I believe that if Whitman weighed in on AI’s capacity to write poetry, he might scoff at the notion that such technology can ever eclipse that which exists within the depths of oneself, derived from attachment-based (right brain) experience, from witnessing, from intergenerational influence, from stream of consciousness (at which Whitman excelled), from all that is as sensorily rich as the scent of newly mowed ‘leaves of grass’, from falling apart and healing, and from the complexities of ‘containing multiples’ within us. Such components link us to identity, curiosity, unknowing, and ultimately to our capacity to transform and transcend human borders. It may then be imperative to change our lives (think Rilke)—if not the lives of others!”

Ms. Cynthia Shor is an Honorary WWBA Trustee and served as Executive Director of the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association (WWBA) from 2007 – 2024. Leading up to this position, Ms. Shor was a WWBA Board Member for three years, and served for over a decade in the roles of program committee member, poetry teacher for school programs, and head judge for the annual student poetry writing contest.  

She received her BA from NYU and MA in Literature from American University, and achieved PhD Candidacy at the NYU Steinhardt School of Education.  During her first doctoral year at NYU in 1995, she was selected as a Teaching Fellow and studied at Oxford University, England.  She returned to teach graduate and undergraduate poetry and literature courses in the Steinhardt School from 1995-2006 wherein she received the Teaching Excellence Award.  She is a member of Kappa Delta Pi, the educational honor society.  She also taught memoir, poetry writing and literature courses in the Great Neck Adult Education Program, and her course, “The Interpretation of Literature” was selected for the David Rauch Memorial Seminar Award. She has done volunteer literacy tutoring, and as a writing coach she has facilitated the writing process and publication of articles, memoirs, and books for her clients.  Ms. Shor is an active Alumna of NYU and serves on the College of Arts & Science Alumni Board as Associate Director and past Vice-President. 

A published poet, Ms. Shor was a Poet in Residence with New York City’s Teachers & Writers Collaborative, and taught poetry writing in over 40 elementary and high schools throughout NYC and Long Island regions.  Her classes inspired a multitude of student poetry anthologies.

From 1996-2024, Shor managed and directed the annual WWBA Student Poetry Writing Contest developing it from a local Long Island contest to include an international audience.  She is the Editor of “Legacy,” the 2024 inaugural anthology of award-winning student poets. 

In 2018, Shor supervised the $160,000 Exhibit Renovation for the Visitors Center, managed by former Trustee President William T. Walter, PhD, and together they secured the capital funding from The Gardiner Foundation and Parks & Trails NY.  In 2019, Shor managed the year-long programs for Whitman’s Bicentennial Birthday Celebration at the Birthplace celebrating Walt’s 200^th year (1819-1892). A main event was The Inaugural Whitman International Conference which brought participants from 6 countries and 10 American states to Whitman’s Birthplace to explore Whitman’s continuing impact on literary and social issues.

Ms. Shor secured two major Whitman book collections enlarging the Association archives to hold the second largest Whitman collection next to the Library of Congress.  She was responsible for the 2014 designation of the Whitman Birthplace as a “Literary Landmark” by United for Libraries Literary Landmarks Register.  That same year, Shor secured from a fifth-generation Whitman descendant the donation of one (of two) historic and priceless Whitman Family Bibles which also preserved a lock of Whitman’s mother’s hair.  In 2022, Shor arranged for a sixth-generation Whitman nephew to join the Association Board.

Shor has two adult children and five grandchildren.  She married David Church in 2018, and retired from her role as Executive Director in 2024.  They reside in their home in Greenville, SC, and maintain an apartment in Des Moines, Iowa, where Shor was born and where her extended family still resides. Her favorite Whitman poem is A Child Went Forth which describes Walt as child emerging from his Birthplace farmhouse and becoming imprinted with the wonders of his environment.  Like Whitman, she became imprinted with the Birthplace wonders, also.  

Robert Savino (born April 24, 1948, Jamaica, NY) is a native Long Island poet, Suffolk County Poet Laureate 2015–2017, Board Member at the Walt Whitman Birthplace and at the Long Island Poetry & Literature Repository Center. He is the winner of the 2008 Oberon Poetry Prize, Association of Italian American Educators – Cristoforo Colombo Award for Literary Leadership (2019), and Town of Islip Italian American Heritage Award for Visual & Performing Arts – in Literature (2019). Robert was first inspired by Blake and Whitman in the sixties when everything became not as ordinary as it appeared and he began a life sentence in a metaphoric mind.

His poetry has been widely published in journals, anthologies, and online, including The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Long Island Quarterly, Mobius, Negative Capability, The North American Review and Sport Literate; and his poems have been written for art and music. One of the poems, “October’s Opal,” was composed by Yung Shen Hsaio as a four-instrument musical ensemble piece and presented at the 2017 International Rostrum of Composers and Conservatorio Vincenzo Bellini, Palermo, Italy.

Robert is co-editor of two bilingual collections of Italian Americans Poets, No Distance Between Us – Italian American Poets of Long Island and No Distance Between Us – The Next Collection – Italian American Poets of New York State. His books include Fireballs of an Illuminated Scarecrow, Inside a Turtle Shell and I’m Not the Only One Here. No Distance Between Us (Nessuna Distanza Tra Noi) is scheduled to become a trilogy of Italian American poetry in a cultural tribute to Dante Aligheri. Inside a Turtle Shell, a diverse journey of paths crossed, lost and found, was selected as the second collection in the three-volume Turtle Island Series (Allbook Books).

Robert lives in West Islip, NY, with his wife and enjoys the role of poetry mentor.