ABOUT JACK VEASEY

A 2010 nominee for a Pushcart Prize, Jack Veasey is a Philadelphia native who has been living in Hummelstown, PA for over 20 years. He is the author of ten published collections of poetry, most recently "The Sonnets" and "5-7-5" (both from Small Hours Press, 2007).

His poems have also appeared in many periodicals including Christopher Street, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Harbinger: A Journal Of Social Ecology, The Philadelphia Daily News, The Painted Bride Quarterly, Fledgling Rag, Oxalis, The Blue Guitar, Bone And Flesh, Zone: A Feminist Journal For Women And Men, Film Library Quarterly (Museum of Modern Art, NYC), Experimental Forest, Tabula Rasa, Wild Onions, Mouth Of The Dragon, Asphodel, Insight, The Irish Edition, The Harrisburg Patriot-News, The Harrisburg Review, The Princeton Spectrum, The Little Word Machine (U.K.), and The Body Politic (Canada), among others. His poems have also appeared in a number of anthologies, including Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets On Pennsylvania (Penn State University Press), Sweet Jesus: Poems About The Ultimate Icon (Anthology Press, Los Angeles), and A Loving Testimony: Remembering Loved Ones Lost To AIDS (The Crossing Press, Freedom, CA).

His plays have been produced by Theater Center Philadelphia and Theater Of The Seventh Sister (Lancaster, PA). He has hosted literary radio programs for WITF FM in Harrisburg and WXPN FM in Philadelphia. He was awarded a Fellowship from the PA Council On The Arts and is a two-time honoree of The PA Center For The Book's PENNBOOK celebration. For many years he hosted poetry readings in the Harrisburg area at The Art Association Of Harriburg's Paper Sword series and at Encore Books and Music, Borders Books and Music, and Open Stage Of Harrisburg, and also taught poetry writing courses at Harrisburg Area Community College Community Education Center, Martin Memorial Library in York, and for the Dauphin County Library System.

Veasey spent the seventies and eighties working as a journalist for such publications as The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Magazine, Pennsylvania Magazine, APPRISE, The Philadelphia City Paper, and The Cherry Hill Courier Post, and editing a number of periodicals in Philadelphia and New York, including The South St. Star, The Philadelphia Gay News, and FirstHand Magazine. His articles for the Philadelphia Gay News won two awards from the national Lesbian And Gay Press Association. He recently wrote an article on Walt Whitman's relationship with his longtime companion Peter Doyle that was syndicated to 40 periodicals nationwide by the Gay History Project.

A singer as well as a poet, Veasey has released one CD album of original songs, Build A Fire, as lead singer of the folk-rock duo Open Book. He has been with his partner in life, David Walker, for over thirty years.

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For information on Jack Veasey's published books, click on the Books heading at his website; there is a link to his website in his profile here.