George Dickerson

Bio

(1933-2015) Poet, writer. George Dickerson, attended Yale on a science scholarship, but switched majors after reading The Great Gatsby. In 1959, he was featured in a reading of Beat Poets. His fiction appeared in Best American Short Stories, 1963 and 1966. His poetry appeared in The New Yorker and Madmoiselle. Penthouse, Saturday Evening Post, and Cosmopolitan also published his writing. He was editor at Time, Story, and Cavalier. In 1973, he was a congressional press secretary. From 1973-1976, he headed Press and Publications for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Beirut, Lebanon, during the civil war. Unable to write after the war, he turned to acting in 1977, winning stage, screen and television roles, including Blue Velvet, After Dark, My Sweet, Hill Street Blues, Three’s Company, Charlie’s Angels, Little House on the Prairie. He was an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences member. In 1999, he founded and edited Rattapallax, A Journal of Contemporary Literature. In 2000, Rattapallax Press published Dickerson’s Selected Poems, 1979-1999, including his play A Few Useless Moments for Sale. “The one thread that leads through most of my better jobs was the love of and power of the use of words.”