| Director, Unterberg Poetry Center |
A wonderful resource for stories about literary trends, poet, actor and editor David Yezzi directs the 92nd Street Y's Unterberg Poetry Center, the world-famous literary and writing program founded in 1939. Mr. Yezzi produces the weekly reading series at which leading poets, playwrights, novelists, and non-fiction authors share and discuss their work. He also oversees the center's youth outreach initiative, adult literacy project, and extensive writing program and runs the 92nd Street Y Poets' Theatre, which presents dramatic readings of plays by poets. In addition to being a poet whose work has been published in literary journals including The Yale Review, The Paris Review and The New Criterion, Mr. Yezzi is associate editor of Parnassus: Poetry in Review; a literary critic whose essays appear regularly in The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Poetry and elsewhere; and an actor who co-founded Thick Description, a San Francisco theater company. Before becoming director of the Poetry Center in 2001, Mr. Yezzi was chief administrator of The New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University. He earned a B.F.A in theater from Carnegie Mellon and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University School of the Arts. His poetry earned him Columbia University's David Craig Austin Memorial Award and The Academy of American Poets College Prize. In 1992, Herbert Leibowitz gave Mr. Yezzi his first editing job at Parnassus: Poetry in Review; since then, he has held editing positions at The New York Observer and The New Criterion, returning to Parnassus as associate editor in 2000. In 1998, Mr. Yezzi was awarded Stanford University's prestigious Wallace Stegner Fellowship, which enabled him to complete his first full-length manuscript of poems. Aralia Press will publish his first poetry collection, Sad is Eros, in fall 2002. Mr. Yezzi lives in New York with his family. |
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| To speak with, contact Jennifer Dorr at 212.415.5455 / email |
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