Wayne Mennecke

Selected as one of New York's best emerging poets in 2019 and nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize, Wayne Mennecke is also an award-winning science teacher at Islip High School where he teaches Science Research, AP Biology, and Anatomy & Physiology. He is the advisor of the high school’s Keep Islip Clean environmental club and encourages students to undertake environmental activism at the local level through community cleanups and beautification events. Wayne has spent summers in Tennessee hunting for mastodon fossils with paleontologists from East Tennessee State University and the badlands of North Dakota and Montana hunting for dinosaur fossils with the Marmarth Research Foundation. He is a graduate of Stony Brook University where he earned degrees in biology and education. While there he conducted research in learning and memory with the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience and studied poetry under the guidance of Jim Papa and Ron Overton. Previously published poetry has appeared in Cagibi, Aurora Poetry, Oberon, Hanging Loose, Avocet, Long Island Quarterly, The Long Islander, Bard's Annual and the environmental anthology Fracture: Essays, Poems and Stories on Fracking in America. His chapbooks Pencils Down and Hypochondria recount his experiences teaching high school on Long Island. He lives with his wife Suzanne and their high-spirited daughter in New York.