Photo by Lucy Cohen
Gary J. Whitehead is an American poet. His fifth collection of poems, Seeing Double, is forthcoming in June of 2026. His previous collections include Strange What Rises (Terrapin Books 2019), A Glossary of Chickens, (selected for the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets and published by Princeton University Press 2013), Measuring Cubits while the Thunder Claps (David Robert Books 2008), and The Velocity of Dust (Salmon Poetry 2004) 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 and was a finalist for New Jersey State Teacher of the Year, 2023-2024. His fifth collection, Seeing Double, will be published in 2026.
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