S. Scott Whitaker

S Scott Whitaker's poetry and fiction has been published in dozens of journals, magazines, and electronic magazines. Whitaker is the author of four chapbooks of poetry, The Barleyhouse Letters, Field Recordings, News From the Front, and The Black Narrows. He has authored a YA action novel based on the Odyssey, Seven Days on the Mountain, and a collection of dystopian fiction, Toxic Tourism. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Nomination for Fiction, the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize, the Delaware Press Association Award for best book of verse, and a NEA grant for re-writing Romeo & Juliet into a rock musical for teenagers. He is a contributing editor to The Broadkill Review, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. Whitaker teaches English, Drama, and occasionally psychology in rural Maryland.

What other writers have said about Whitaker's writing:

The Barleyhouse Letters

"Scott Whitaker's Barleyhouse Letters" achieve both poetry and story-telling. Two memorable women and their world, seen tenderly but candidly at outset and decline, come to life in their words--and sometimes their remarkable figurative language. Here the epistolary method becomes the act of writing dramatized, as real and intimate as an embrace." Robert Pinsky, poet

"Whitaker shines with voice and character."--Sheri Reynolds, author of The Rapture of Canaan

"Whitaker has written a book we wish we all poets would write--clear, crafted and responsible."-- Sam Cornish, poet

"This is a strange wild fascinating story." David Ferry, poet

Field Recordings

"For the first time, the judges were unanimous in their decision to select Field Recordings." --Jamie Brown, poet, editor

"Terse, gritty." Sam Calagione, President & Founder of Dogfish Brewery

The Black Narrows

"With scraps of history and a thread of fiction, Scott Whitaker has stitched together a patchwork-quilt world. These are living poems that celebrate a long-dead place, drenched with images. These lines are muscular, masculine, and smell of the rich air on the cusp of land and water; they taste of clams and raw oysters." HA Maxson, poet, publisher