Richard Jeffrey Newman

Bio

As a poet and essayist, Richard Jeffrey Newman’s work explores the impact of feminism on his life as a man, especially as a survivor of childhood sexual violence. As a co-translator of classical Persian poetry, he writes about the impact of that canon on our contemporary lives. His books include “For My Son, A Kind of Prayer” (forthcoming in April 2016 from Ghostbird Press), “The Silence of Men” (Cavankerry Press), and the translation “The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahameh” (Junction Press). He curates the First Tuesdays reading series in Elmhurst, New York and is acting President of the Board of Directors of Newtown Literary Alliance, a Queens-based literary non-profit. In 2015, he received an individual artist’s grant from the Queens Council on the Arts to complete his second book of poems Words for What Those Men Have Done. His poems have appeared in a wide range of journals and his essays have been published in, among other places, Salon.com, The Scavenger, and The Good Men Project. Newman is Professor of English at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York. His website is www.richardjnewman.com.