Background
Joseph Weil teaches poetry as well as fiction at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.
Since 2008, four full-length volumes of his poems have been published: What Remains (Night Shade, 2008) Painting the Christmas Trees (Texas Review Press), The Plumber's Apprentice (New York Quarterly books, 2009) and The Great Grandmother Light, New and Selected (New York Quarterly books, 2013).
Weil's poems, essays, reviews and stories have appeared in The Paterson Literary Review, MAGGY, Omnibus, The New Renaissance, The Saranac Review, Rattle, The Louisiana Review of Literature, Paddlefish, Best American Poems Online, The New York Times and The Boston Review, among others. He has been featured on PBS' Fooling with Words with Bill Moyers, on NJ PBS, in the Sunday section of The New York Times and on Pacifica Radio. He is fiction editor of Ragazine, former publisher/founder of Monk Books, current publisher of Cat in the Sun Press, and a frequent contributor to , an international blog built by some of Weil's former students around his essays on poetry and literature.
Weil is a noted performer who has presented both poetry and music at such venues as the New Jersey State Performing Arts Center, the Knitting Factory, the Detroit Opera House, the Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center, Poet's House, the University of Pittsburgh, and at the Geraldine R. Dodge poetry festivals. As a poet, Weil has been featured with Stephen Dunn, Allen Ginsberg, Gerald Stern, Louise Gluck, Wanda Coleman, Jan Beatty and Patricia Smith. As a musician, Weil has played with such noteworthy performers as Sweet Sue Terry, Perry Robinson, the Academy Award-winning composer Earl Robinson, and Vic Ruggerio, well-known leader of the Ska Band the Slackers.