Richard Tayson

Richard Tayson earned his MFA from New York University and PhD from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, where he wrote a dissertation concerning William Blake’s influence on New York’s underground punk music culture. Tayson’s collections of poetry include The World Underneath (2008) and The Apprentice of Fever (1998), which won the Wick Poetry Prize. With Julia Tavalaro, he co-authored the memoir Look Up for Yes (1998); Tayson also wrote the foreword for the Walt Whitman’s Live-Oak, with Moss: A Restorative Edition (2012). His poems and non-fiction have appeared widely, in journals such as the Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, and Pleiades, where he is a contributing editor.
 
Tayson’s honors and awards include a Pushcart Prize and the Edward Stanley and Bernice Slote awards from Prairie Schooner. He has received two fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He lives in Queens, New York and teaches at the New School Writing Program and Queensborough Community College. He is currently completing a memoir on obsession, addiction, and celebrity culture.