Wayne Koestenbaum

Wayne Koestenbaum has published over 20 books of poetry, criticism, and fiction, including The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, 1993). His piano/vocal record, Lounge Act, was released by Ugly Duckling Presse Records in 2017; he has given musical performances of his improvisatory Sprechstimme soliloquies at the Hammel Museum, The Kitchen, REDCAT, Centre Pompidou, Walker Art Center, the Artist’s Institute, the Renaissance Society, and the Poetry Project. His feature-length film, The Collective, premiered at UnionDocs in 2021. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a Writing Award. Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library acquired his literary archive. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and comparative literature at the CUNY Graduate Center.