Photo © Bill Hayward

Jason Shinder

Jason Shinder was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1955. He was the founder and director of the YMCA National Writer's Voice, as well as the director of Sundance Institute's Writing Program. He taught in the graduate writing programs at Bennington College and the New School University.

He is the author of Among Women (Graywolf Press, 2001), Every Room We Ever Slept In (1993), a NY Public Library Notable Book, and the chapbook Uncertain Hours.

About his second book, Among Women, Carol Muske-Dukes wrote: "I don't know of any male poet who approximates the honest terror and desire, the sense of shock that runs through these poems. They are so fixed in a merciless surgical light and yet they're so tender and alive with emotion."

Shinder is also the editor of many anthologies, most recently: The Poem That Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later (2006) and The Poem I Turn To: Actors and Directors Present Poetry That Inspires Them (2008).

His awards and fellowships include serving as Poet Laureate of Provincetown, MA, and a 2007 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He divided his time between Provincetown and New York City. Shinder died in April 2008.