Dick Bentley

DICK BENTLEY'S career as an urban planner has taken him to Chicago's Old Town and Woodlawn neighborhoods as well as San Francisco's Telegraph Hill, Washington's Georgetown, New York's upper west side, Brooklyn's Park Slope and Boston's Beacon Hill. He was Chief Planner for the Mayor's Office of Housing in Boston and Planning Director for the Boston Housing Authority. He has held similar positions with neighborhood groups, and with private developers of affordable housing.

His planning activities led to his book "American Neighborhoods" a twitchy
 version of slick coffee-table books like "The Ten Most Beautiful Villages of Tuscany, Dordogne, Roussillon, Brittany etc. (or Wherever.)"

In his second career as a poet and fiction writer, he has taught creative writing at the University of Massachusetts and is the author of three books, "Post-Freudian Dreaming" "A General Theory of Desire"and "All Rise". He won the Paris Review/Paris Writers Workshop International Fiction Award and his short story "Promised Land" was selected for "Best Fiction & Nonfiction of 2012" in the Lukather-Garson anthology.

He has published over 200 poems and short stories in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, France, and Brazil.

He's the husband of Carolyn, a Doctor of Physical Therapy. His son, Nicholas is a lawyer and his daughter Julia is a doctor. He's a graduate of Yale and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His books are available from amazon.com, from Powell's, and from WWW.DICKBENTLEY.COM

He talks frequently with his readers at 413-256-0240 and on his Facebook page