Eleanor Imperato ’68

Eleanor M. Imperato is a freelance writer, poet, and photographer. In addition to her role as president of the Marymount Manhattan College Dance Department Advisory Board, she is an active member of the Queensborough Community College Fund Board, and a member of NOIAW (National Organization of Italian American Women).

She received a BA from Marymount Manhattan College and subsequently earned an MA in Liberal Studies from New York University. While not a dancer, her lifelong love of dance began modestly with a Modern Dance semester class with noted dancer Janet Collins. It continued for a brief period in the early 70’s with adult ballet classes at the Joffrey Ballet School on West 10^th and Sixth Avenue in New York City. During those golden years of dance and together with her MMC classmate, Mary Whitney, who eventually became Marketing Director for the Joffrey Ballet, Imperato attended countless dance performances of the best dance companies of the world. She is still an enthusiastic balletomane, but her involvement with the MMC Dance Department adds a more meaningful dimension in that it promotes dancers in the early stages of their future careers.

Her professional life has included positions at Pan American World Airways, thus traveling all over the world; in publicity at the Science Museum of Long Island; in publicity and public relations at the Manhasset Public Schools; and in fundraising at Marymount Manhattan College. While raising her three children in Manhasset, she held many volunteer leadership positions in her community including President of the Friends of the Manhasset Public Library and Executive President of the Manhasset School Community Association. She still resides in the area with her husband, Pat, and Duncan, their 12 year old cat. Her now grown children, Alison, Gavin, and Austin, have successful careers of their own.

Imperato is the author of a first collection of original poetry entitled Woman’s Work, and is currently preparing her second, Purple Sins. Her book, Doors of Memory/Porte della Memoria, a memoir of her early years in Avella, Italy, was published in conjunction with a photographic essay by the same name that was exhibited in two New York City Galleries. In her most recent book, Carving Life: Walrus Ivory Carvings from the Bering Sea, she shares her love for Alaska, her appreciation for the Alaska Inuit history and art, and her personal encounters with many of the carvers whose work was exhibited at the QCC Art Gallery in Bayside, New York.

Besides being an avid reader, Imperato also enjoys traveling to destinations in the U.S. and Europe as well as to off-the-beaten track locales. Her most memorable trips include visits to St. Lawrence Island and Shishmaref in Alaska; Timbuktu, Mali; Chichicastenango in Guatemala; and Macau, an autonomous region on the south coast of China. Who knows what other far away and unusual destinations await her in the future.