ABOUT LEONARD DURSO
Explorer of words, worlds, and everything in between.
I am a native New Yorker who was talked into going to school in Ohio by my supposedly best friend and ended up staying there long enough to receive a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Bowling Green University.
I drifted out to Los Angeles because my ex-wife was intent on becoming a movie star. Having no better way to squander my money, I opened up a literary bookstore with two friends from the MFA program called Intellectuals & Liars in Santa Monica and became part of the poetry scene there. I had a few short stories and an excerpt from an earlier novel published in some small literary magazines, held weekly poetry/prose readings, published broadsides, and, being no exception to the rule that poetry doesn’t sell, went out of business.
Istanbul-based author & screenwriter.
Currently working on new books and screenwriting.
This led to a series of jobs like selling shoes, running a warehouse, writing advertising copy for radio, and, after completing a second MA in Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), began teaching English to immigrants. Since my main concern was keeping a roof over my head and the wolves from the door while I continued to write, I took a job as a full-time tenured faculty member at a junior college.
Eventually, not being satisfied with just teaching, I created an English Language Institute and went over to the dark side to join the administration so I could run it. In addition, I then became the Director of the Language Center at one college and the Director of the English as a Second Language Program at another college. Finding myself enamored with the idea of living overseas, I took a job in 2008-09 as the Director of the English Preparatory Program at a two year vocational college in Beykoz, Istanbul.
2009 found me bouncing back and forth between New York and Istanbul but, as of May, 2010, I settled in Istanbul to be the director of the English program at Plato College of Higher Education for four years, then moved to Izmir to coach managers at a petrol/chemical company. Another post as the Director of the Foreign Languages Department at a different university followed before I began coaching employees at a nuclear energy company in managerial skills in Ankara.
Now my work is to read, write screenplays full-time (having created the film production company HICH Prductions with 3 Turkish partners), and travel. And once, in a city far, far away, I was a scoutmaster, which means I’m pretty good at tying knots, building campfires, and am also loyal, trustworthy, helpful, etc.