Photo by Lucy Cohen
Gary J. Whitehead's fourth collection of poems, Strange What Rises, was published by Terrapin Books in 2019. His third collection, A Glossary of Chickens, was selected for the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets and published by Princeton University Press in 2013. Previous books include Measuring Cubits while the Thunder Claps and The Velocity of Dust. He has also authored three chapbooks of poetry, two of which were winners of national competitions. His writing awards include, among others, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, the Pearl Hogrefe Fellowship at Iowa State University, and the PEN Northwest Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency Award. His poems have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, the Writer's Almanac, Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry, the Guardian's Poem of the Week, and the BBC's Words and Music program. He has also been awarded the Princeton University Distinguished Secondary School Teaching Award. His poems have appeared widely, most notably in The New Yorker. He lives in northern New Jersey and teaches English at Tenafly High School. He was selected for Bergen County Teacher of the Year for 2023-2024.