Ray McNiece is the author of eleven books of poems and monologues, most recently The Bone Key Sutra (SeaStory Press, 2025), Love Song for Cleveland, a collaboration with photographer Tim Lachina, and Breath Burns Away. The Orlando Sentinel, reporting on Ray’s solo theater piece “Us — Talking Across America” at the Fringe Festival, called him a "modern-day descendant of Woody Guthrie. He has a way with words and a wry sense of humor.”
Ray McNiece is the author of eleven books of poems and monologues, most recently The Bone Key Sutra (SeaStory Press, 2025), Love Song for Cleveland, a collaboration with photographer Tim Lachina, and Breath Burns Away, New Haiku (Red Giant Press, 2019). The Orlando Sentinel reporting on Ray’s solo theater piece “Us — Talking Across America” at the Fringe Festival called him “a modern day descendant of Woody Guthrie. He has a way with words and a wry sense of humor.” His most recent theatrical piece, Lives of A Poet, premiered at Cleve-land Public Theater in 2016. He toured Russia with Yevgeny Yevtushenko, ap-peared on Good Morning, Russia and performed at the Moscow Polytech, the Russian Poets’ Hall of Fame where he was dubbed ‘the American Mayakovsky.’ He has toured Italy twice with legendary beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He fronts the blues rock band, Tongue-in-Groove. He was appointed Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights in April 2020. He received the Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021. In 2022, he was Awarded a $50,000 Poet Laureate Grant from the American Academy of Poetry for his Poem for Cleveland Project.
