Ron Singer - Writer

Ron Singer trawls the genres: poetry, fiction, satire, journalism (about Africa), and drama (including librettos for two operas, recorded and performed). Among the places his work has appeared are Borderlands: The Texas Poetry Review; The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; diagram (e-zine and print anthology) Ellipsis; Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review; Poets & Writers online; The Wall Street Journal; Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream; Willow Review; Windsor Review; and numerous literary e-zines.

He also wrote the Introduction to Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (Bantam Books). In November 2006 his chapbook, A Voice for My Grandmother, was published by Ten Penny Players. It has thus far been reviewed nine times, and a second printing was issued in October 2007. O Ti Lo Wa Ju (“You Have Gone Past All”), an essay-review on new African writing, is in the Summer 2007 issue of The Georgia Review. (The Georgia Review was a finalist for the 2008 National Magazine Award for General Excellence, circulation under 100,000.) The Second Kingdom, Three Comic Novellas ("The Key," "The Changing Woman Health Conference," and "The Parents We Deserve") will be issued as an e-book in January 2009 by Cantarabooks LLC.

Born in Bronx, New York, in 1941, Singer grew up there and in Little Neck, Queens. He has degrees in English from Union College (B.A., 1962) and The University of Chicago (M.A., 1967, Ph.D., 1976). His teaching career began in the Peace Corps (Nigeria, 1964-67) and continued in Chicago and Hawaii. Returning to New York in 1974, he taught at Friends Seminary, a K-12 Quaker school, for thirty-two years, finally retiring in January 2008. Elizabeth Yamin, his wife, teaches, too, and she is a visual artist; Zoe Singer, their daughter, is a food writer.

“Mainly little semi-documentary flash-poems that catch reality as it flashes by. Like Ron Singer’s poem, “You Can’t Write Fast Enough”: “You can’t write fast enough to chronicle the visible world...” An excellent mag that teaches succinctness, terseness, focus. No blathering, no big experimental ego-trips, just sketches that bring you into realities that are mainly art- and literature-centered but caught up and wounded by the barbed-wire realities that surround artists and writers (and everyone else) these days.

–Hugh Fox, “Flashes,” (writing about Waterways: Vol.26, #8),
small press review, March-April 2006.



“Ron Singer’s brief memoir of his grandmother is full of snapshots so rooted in a particular time and place and culture that it creates a universal understanding of a generation for whom the world changed more rapidly than most. He creates a picture as multifaceted as a Picasso portrait.” - from Bill Dorn’s review of A Voice for My Grandmother, Golden Handcuffs, Winter/Spring 2007. Singer is Featured Poet in the Fall issue of New Works Review. On Election Day, a pdf of this issue will be available for downloading (free) at their website (www.new-works.org).	Ron Singer trawls the genres: poetry, fiction, satire, journalism (about Africa), and drama (including librettos for two operas, recorded and performed). Among the places his work has appeared are Borderlands: The Texas Poetry Review; The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; diagram (e-zine and print anthology) Ellipsis; Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review; Poets & Writers online; The Wall Street Journal; Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream; Willow Review; Windsor Review; and numerous literary e-zines. He also wrote the Introduction to Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (Bantam Books). In November 2006 his chapbook, A Voice for My Grandmother, was published by Ten Penny Players. It has thus far been reviewed nine times, and a second printing was issued in October 2007. O Ti Lo Wa Ju (“You Have Gone Past All”), an essay-review on new African writing, is in the Summer 2007 issue of The Georgia Review. (The Georgia Review was a finalist for the 2008 National Magazine Award for General Excellence, circulation under 100,000.) The Second Kingdom, Three Comic Novellas ("The Key," "The Changing Woman Health Conference," and "The Parents We Deserve") will be issued as an e-book in January 2009 by Cantarabooks LLC. Born in Bronx, New York, in 1941, Singer grew up there and in Little Neck, Queens. He has degrees in English from Union College (B.A., 1962) and The University of Chicago (M.A., 1967, Ph.D., 1976). His teaching career began in the Peace Corps (Nigeria, 1964-67) and continued in Chicago and Hawaii. Returning to New York in 1974, he taught at Friends Seminary, a K-12 Quaker school, for thirty-two years, finally retiring in January 2008. Elizabeth Yamin, his wife, teaches, too, and she is a visual artist; Zoe Singer, their daughter, is a food writer. “Mainly little semi-documentary flash-poems that catch reality as it flashes by. Like Ron Singer’s poem, “You Can’t Write Fast Enough”: “You can’t write fast enough to chronicle the visible world...” An excellent mag that teaches succinctness, terseness, focus. No blathering, no big experimental ego-trips, just sketches that bring you into realities that are mainly art- and literature-centered but caught up and wounded by the barbed-wire realities that surround artists and writers (and everyone else) these days. –Hugh Fox, “Flashes,” (writing about Waterways: Vol.26, #8), small press review, March-April 2006.