Gary J. Whitehead

Gary Joseph Whitehead (born March 23, 1965 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island) is an American poet, painter, and cruciverbalist.

Life
Whitehead teaches English and creative writing at the National Blue Ribbon School of Tenafly High School in Tenafly, New Jersey.

He is the author of three books of poetry: A Glossary of Chickens (Princeton University Press, in press) 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: After the Drowning (Finishing Line Press), A Cool, Dry Place (White Eagle Coffee Store Press), and Walking Back to Providence (Sow's Ear Press). His work has appeared in journals, magazines and newspapers and most notably in The New Yorker and Poetry. He has held artist residencies at Blue Mountain Center, Mesa Refuge, and the Heinrich Böll cottage in Ireland.

Well known for his poetry, Whitehead is also a painter whose work appears in private and corporate collections in America and the United Kingdom, and his crossword puzzles have been published in The New York Sun, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and, most notably, The New York Times.

Recognition
His awards include a New York Foundation for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry, two Galway Kinnell Poetry Prizes, a Pearl Hogrefe Fellowship at Iowa State University, and a Princeton University Distinguished Secondary School Teaching Award in 2003.

In 2004, he was the recipient of the PEN Northwest Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency Award, and spent April though October, 2005 in a secluded cabin in the woods of southwestern Oregon.