Eugene M Gagliano

Check out the latest reviews coming in October for Secret of the Black Widow and Ice Cave

from D. Donovan, Sr. Reviewer, Midwest Book Review and

Diane Donovan, Editor, Donovan’s Literary Services.

Wyoming’s State Poet Laureate, known by many children as the “teacher who dances on his desk“, Gene Gagliano (pronounced Galiano) is a retired elementary school teacher with a great sense of humor. He and his wife Carol, who have four children a d seven grandchildren, live near the base of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming. Gene enjoys reading and writing, traveling, hiking, acrylic painting, singing tenor in the community choir, and spending hours flower and vegetable gardening. Gene’s author presentations are entertaining, informative, and inspirational. He has presented at 184 schools, and at IRA, teacher, SCBWI, and library conferences, and for libraries and festivals in Wyoming, Colorado, Missouri, South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Texas and Hawaii. Gene was the recipient of the IRA’s 2004 Wyoming State Celebrate Literacy Award and the 2001 Arch Coal Teacher Achievement Award. Gene’s book Dee and the Mammoth illustrated by Zachary Pullen, won the 2010-11 Wyoming State Historical Society Award for Best Fiction. *Dee and the Mammoth represented the state of Wyoming at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. in 2011. His other books include C is for Cowboy, A Wyoming Alphabet, Four Wheels West, A Wyoming Number Book (a former Western Writer’s Spur Award nominee; V is for Venus Flytrap, A Plant Alphabet; My Teacher Dances on the Desk (winner of the 2010 Delaware Diamonds Book List Children’s Choice Award); Secret of the Black Widow (a former Wyoming Indian Paintbrush Award nominee); The Magic Box; Falling Stars; Inside the Clown; Booger; Little Wyoming; Angel’s Landing; Is It True? (2017  children’s humorous poetry book); Snap (2019) 2nd place 2019 Evvy Award winner and Wedge of Fear (2018) 3rd place 2019 Evvy Award winner. He has two hard covers, beautifully illustrated in color poetry books, A Wyoming State of Mind (2021) and More Than Four Seasons (2022). He is a graduate of the Institute of Children’s Literature, and is on the Wyoming Arts Council Artists Roster. Gene is the Wyoming State Poet Laureate. His nook It It True? was selected as the state of Wyoming’s Best Read for 2018 for the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. Gene’s latest children’s poetry book What Did You Say? (2021) is the sequel is Is It True? Little Hawaii is his latest board book. WY PBS released a documentary, in 2022, about Gene being the Wyoming Poet Laureate. Check out this site for links to his books.