Michael Coffey

Bio

Michael Coffey was raised in the small hamlet of Saranac in upstate New York. His father was a correction officer at Clinton Correctional Facility (Dannemora) and his mother a registered nurse in Plattsburgh. He graduated from Saranac Central High School in 1972, and received a B.A. in English from the University of Notre Dame (1976) and an M.A. in Anglo-Irish Literature from Leeds University (1977). He has worked in publishing in New York City since 1978, and is currently vice-president and co-editorial director at Publishers Weekly. He has published three books of poems and co-edited The Irish in America, a book on Irish immigration that was a companion to a PBS documentary called “The Long Journey Home.” He has also published a book about baseball, 27 Men Out: Baseball’s Perfect Games (Atria, 2004). Recent work has appeared in the New England Review and Conjuctions magazine.