James Reiss

Background

Reiss (pronounced "Reese") grew up in the Washington Heights section of New York City and in northern New Jersey.

Education

Bachelor, University Chicago, 1963. Master of Arts, University Chicago, 1964.

Career

He earned his B.A. and his M.A. in English from the University of Chicago. His poems have appeared in magazines that include The Atlantic, Esquire, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Poetry, Slate, and Virginia Quarterly Review. From 1971-1974 he was a regular poetry critic for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio.

In 1975-76 he taught as poet-in-residence at Queens College, CUNY. He is Professor Emeritus of English and Founding Editor of Miami University Press at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Reiss lives in the Chicago area.

Achievements

• He has won grants from the Creative Artists Public Service Program of the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. He has received awards from, among others, the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Press and the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York City. In 1977 he won first prize in New York’s Big Apple Bicentennial Poetry Contest.
  
  He won four annual Zeitfunk awards for his reviewing, in 2007-2010, from the Public Radio Exchange, PRX.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Riff on Six: New and Selected Poems

    (This book contains poems from Reiss's first four books, p...)

  • When Yellow Leaves

    ( James Reiss’s madcap miscellany of Americana features ...)

  • The Breathers (The American Poetry)

    (His first book of poetry and fourth in the publisher's Am...)

  • The Parable of Fire (Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series)

    (A collection of poetry by James Reiss.)

  • Ten Thousand Good Mornings

    (A collection of poetry by James Reiss.)

  • Riff on Six: New and Selected Poems by James Reiss (2003-09-01)
  • Riff on Six: New and Selected Poems by Reiss, James (2003) Paperback
  • When Yellow Leaves by James Reiss (2016-04-15)

Membership

Member Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association, Poetry Society of America (Consuelo Ford award 1974, Lucille Medwick award 1989), Associated Writing Programs.

Connections

Married Barbara Eve Klevs, June 21, 1964 (divorced June 1995). Children: Heather, Crystal.

Father:

Joseph Ronald

Mother:

Cecilia Bee Reiss

Spouse:

Barbara Eve Klevs

child:

Heather Reiss

child:

Crystal Reiss