Raymond Luczak

Raymond Luczak (pronounced as written but with a silent "c") is the author and editor of over 20 books, including ASSEMBLY REQUIRED: NOTES FROM A DEAF GAY LIFE (Handtype Press) and MEN WITH THEIR HANDS: A NOVEL (Queer Mojo). His work as a poet have appeared in the collections ST. MICHAEL'S FALL (Deaf Life Press), THIS WAY TO THE ACORNS (Handtype Press), MUTE (A Midsummer Night's Press), ROAD WORK AHEAD (Sibling Rivalry Press), HOW TO KILL POETRY (Sibling Rivalry Press), THE KISS OF WALT WHITMAN STILL ON MY LIPS (Squares & Rebels), and A BABBLE OF OBJECTS (Fomite Press). Four of his full-length stage plays have been collected in WHISPERS OF A SAVAGE SORT AND OTHER PLAYS ABOUT THE DEAF AMERICAN EXPERIENCE (Gallaudet University Press). He edited the anthologies EYES OF DESIRE: A DEAF GAY & LESBIAN READER (Alyson), EYES OF DESIRE 2: A DEAF GLBT READER (Handtype Press), AMONG THE LEAVES: QUEER MALE POETS ON THE MIDWESTERN EXPERIENCE (Squares & Rebels), and QDA: A QUEER DISABILITY ANTHOLOGY (Squares & Rebels). His next book is FLANNELWOOD: A NOVEL (Red Hen Press).

Luczak was raised in Ironwood, a small mining town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Number seven in a family of nine children, he lost much of his hearing due to double pneumonia at the age of seven months. After high school graduation, Luczak went on to Gallaudet University, in Washington, DC, where he earned a B.A. in English. He learned American Sign Language (ASL) and became involved with the Deaf community.

In 1988, he moved to New York City. In short order, his play SNOOTY (available in his collection WHISPERS OF A SAVAGE SORT) won first place in the New York Deaf Theater's 1990 Samuel Edwards Deaf Playwrights Competition, and his essay "Notes of a Deaf Gay Writer" won acceptance as a cover story for CHRISTOPHER STREET magazine. (Parts of the essay were expanded into his memoir ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.) His novel MEN WITH THEIR HANDS won a first-prize award from the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation for Full-Length Fiction 2003 in the spring of 2004. The book has gone on to win first place in the Project: QueerLit 2006 Contest. A playwright and filmmaker, Luczak now lives in Minneapolis, where he is always working on his next book.

You can check out his clips at YouTube.com/deafwoof and news at Facebook.com/raymondsbooks. His web site is raymondluczak.com.