Harry Newman

FALL UPDATE: Cliff Dwellers' publication date was September 15. The book is now available from ThePoetryShop.com, the usual online book outlets, or directly from the publisher Silverfish Review Press (links below). The collection can also be found at a growing number of independent bookstores across the U.S.

Harry Newman divides his time between writing poetry and writing for theater. His plays and poetry often revolve around loss, resistance, and the effects of power on individuals and society.

His new full-length collection Cliff Dwellers — published September 2026 by Silverfish Review Press — is an interweaving of political and personal poetry on state violence and militarism and their consequences on our lives. (Order here from Silverfish and ThePoetryShop.)

His poems have been published widely in American literary journals over the last 20 years. (A few samples are online at Ecotone, Rattle, and Warscapes.) He is also the author of the chapbook, Led from a Distance, a sequence of poems exploring the impact of years of war fought at a distance and mediated mainly through screens, when seen at all.

Newman’s plays include The Occupation, the story of the military occupation of a country told from the perspective of the occupied; Dry Time, written in the early 1990s and likely the first climate change related play; one-acts, The Dark and Correspondence; and a translation of Patrick Süskind’s The Double Bass (with Eric Overmyer).

His work has been presented at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival, the Public Theater in New York, the Cincinnati Playhouse, the Guggenheim Works & Progress series, the Segal Theatre Center, and many other theaters across the U.S., as well as in Germany.

Trained in science, he studied Chemistry and Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before deciding (perhaps, madly) to focus on writing.

Press and Media: 

"Led from a Distance," (review), The Rumpus

"How We Fail to Humanize War," PBS NewsHour

Readings:

Brackett Creek Exhibitions, Brooklyn, NY, March 2024 (video)

Elk River Books, Livingston, MT (video), July 2023