Ira Silverberg

Ira Silverberg works in literary publishing and the nonprofit arts. He has been the Editor-in-Chief of Grove Press, Literature Director of the National Endowment for the Arts, Publisher of High Risk Books (Serpent’s Tail), and Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster, and was a literary agent for many years. He’s been a member of the adjunct faculty since 2014.

He’s edited, published, or represented Kathy Acker, William S. Burroughs, Dennis Cooper, June Jordan, David Wojnarowicz. Nadia Owusu, Sam Lipsyte, Binnie Kirschenbaum, Fernando Pessoa, Cookie Mueller, Tope Folarin, Lisa Halliday, John Giorno, Lynne Tillman, Kenzaburo Oe, Elfriede Jelinek, Herve Guibert, Sapphire, and Adam Haslett among many others, including Nobel Prize winners, Whiting Foundation Fellows, PEN Award-winners, Lambda Literary Awardees, and Pulitzer and National Book Award finalists. He is best known in the literary and publishing sector for having advanced the careers of writers who defy the dominant literary culture by giving voice to the marginalized and/or by defying tradition through formally adventurous work.

He's been a consultant to the Academy of American Poets, Nightboat Books, The Drift, Conjunctions, Distributed Art Publishers, ArtForum, ArtPapers, and many other literary and art publications, service organizations, presenting organizations, and funders. He’s been an awards panelist for the Mellon Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and other arts funders; and has served on the Boards of BOMB Magazine, The New School MFA Writing Program, the Community of Literary Magazines and Publishers, and Copper Canyon Press.

His writing has appeared in ArtForum, Document Journal, Frieze, New York Magazine, Paris Review, Textual Practice, and Vulture. He received the Publishing Triangle’s Leadership Award in 2013.  He's currently working on a memoir.