Ray McNiece has authored eleven books of poems and monologues and CDs, most recently Love Song for Cleveland, a collaboration with photographer Tim Lachina and Breath Burns Away, New Haiku. In a review of his second theatre work, Us? Talking Across America, the Star-Phoenix said, “His thoughtful writing combines with perfectly timed delivery to create a powerful wordscape that owes as much to jazz as drama.” He has toured Italy twice with Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He fronts the improv band, Tongue-in-Groove. He has received a Creative Work Force Fellowship, a CPAC grant and residencies at The Cuyahoga Valley National Park and the Jack Kerouac House. He was the 10th Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights. He received the Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021. He was Awarded a $50,000 Poet Laureate Grant from the American Academy of Poetry for his Poem for Cleveland Project in 2022 from which the anthology “Poem For Cleveland” was created.