Raymond Luczak (pronounced as written but with a silent "c") is the author and editor of fifteen books, including ASSEMBLY REQUIRED: NOTES FROM A DEAF GAY LIFE (RID Press) and MEN WITH THEIR HANDS: A NOVEL (Queer Mojo). His work as a poet have appeared in the collections ST. MICHAEL'S FALL (Deaf Life Press), THIS WAY TO THE ACORNS (Handtype Press), MUTE (A Midsummer Night's Press), and ROAD WORK AHEAD (Sibling Rivalry Press). Four of his full-length stage plays have been collected in WHISPERS OF A SAVAGE SORT AND OTHER PLAYS ABOUT THE DEAF AMERICAN EXPERIENCE (Gallaudet University Press). He edited the anthologies EYES OF DESIRE: A DEAF GAY & LESBIAN READER (Alyson) and EYES OF DESIRE 2: A DEAF GLBT READER (Handtype Press). Squares & Rebels has brought out his anthology AMONG THE LEAVES: QUEER MALE POETS ON THE MIDWESTERN EXPERIENCE in September 2012. Sibling Rivalry Press has published his fifth poetry collection HOW TO KILL POETRY in March 2013. Luczak was raised in Ironwood, a small mining town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Number seven in a family of nine children, he lost much of his hearing due to double pneumonia at the age of seven months. After high school graduation, Luczak went on to Gallaudet University, in Washington, DC, where he earned a B.A. in English. He learned American Sign Language (ASL) and became involved with the Deaf community. In 1988, he moved to New York City. In short order, his play SNOOTY (available in his collection WHISPERS OF A SAVAGE SORT) won first place in the New York Deaf Theater's 1990 Samuel Edwards Deaf Playwrights Competition, and his essay "Notes of a Deaf Gay Writer" won acceptance as a cover story for CHRISTOPHER STREET magazine. (Parts of the essay were expanded into his memoir ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.) His novel MEN WITH THEIR HANDS won a first-prize award from the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation for Full-Length Fiction 2003 in the spring of 2004. The book has gone on to win first place in the Project: QueerLit 2006 Contest. A playwright and filmmaker, Luczak now lives in Minneapolis, where he has just completed his next novel.You can check out his clips at YouTube.com/deafwoof and his blog at deafwoofbarks.blogspot.com. His web site is raymondluczak.com.