Gary Whitehead

Gary Joseph Whitehead (born March 23, 1965, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island) is an American poet and educator. He is the author of four books of poetry: Strange What Rises (Terrapin Books, 2019) A Glossary of Chickens (Princeton University Press, 2013) Measuring Cubits while the Thunder Claps (David Robert Books, 2008) and The Velocity of Dust (Salmon Poetry, 2004). His work has appeared in journals, magazines and newspapers and most notably in The New Yorker and Poetry.

His awards include a New York Foundation for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry, a Pearl Hogrefe Fellowship at Iowa State University, the Anne Halley Prize from The Massachusetts Review, and a Princeton University Distinguished Secondary School Teaching Award in 2003. In 2023, he was named Bergen County Teacher of the Year. He has held artist residencies at Blue Mountain Center, Mesa Refuge, Marble House Project, and the Heinrich Böll cottage in Ireland. 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 wilderness of southwestern Oregon.

Well known for his poetry, Whitehead is also a crossword constructor whose puzzles have appeared in The New York Sun, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. He teaches English and creative writing at the National Blue Ribbon School of Tenafly High School in Tenafly, New Jersey.