Dan Masterson was elected to membership in Pen International in 1986. He is the  recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, the Bullis, Borestone, and Fels awards,  and is an AWP Award Series honoree, as well as the founding editor of the  internet's revered Enskyment Poetry Anthology.

The complete texts of his first two books, On Earth as It Is and Those  Who Trespass, are in the permanent collection of The Contemporary American Poetry Archives.  His work has also been anthologized in The Random House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry; Holt Language Arts; Poets Against the War; Caught in the Net; and Perfect in Their Art.

A fourth collection, his New and Selected, All Things, Seen and Unseen, was released by The University of Arkansas Press in 1997.  His work has appeared in an eclectic array of publications including  Poetry, Hotel Amerika, Esquire, Shenandoah, New Yorker, Esquire, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Artful Dodge, Ekphrasis, Poems Niederngasse, Chautauqua Literary Journal, London Magazine, and Innisfree, as well as the Ontario, Sewanee, Paris,  Southern, Hudson, Yale, Gettysburg, Massachusetts, New Orleans, and Georgia Reviews.

Professor Masterson, a recipient of The Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, has directed the Poetry program at SUNY/Rockland for 44 years. During eighteen of those years, he also served as an adjunct full professor at Manhattanville College, directing the poetry  and screenwriting programs, and continues his affiliation with that institution through a graduate poetry writing course he offers online. Upon  his retirement, The Manhattanville Board of Trustees established The Dan  Masterson Prize in Screenwriting.

In 2006, Syracuse University's Bird Library assumed stewardship of The Dan Masterson Papers for its Special Collections Research Center. Professor Masterson credits many fellow poets as mentors and inspiration, including Marya Zaturenska, Horace Gregory, Anne Sexton, James Dickey, Miller Williams, Donald Hall, and John Allman.

He spent his early years in Buffalo, NY, involved in drumming and boxing. He has served stints as actor, narrator, disc jockey,  missionary worker, advertising copywriter, and theatrical public relations  director. He resides in Rockland County, NY, with his wife, Janet, a psychotherapist. They spend much of the snow-free months at their cabin hideaway in the high peak region of the Adirondack mountains.