Ira Greenfest

Ira Greenfest is looking forward to publishing his first novel soon. An early version was workshopped at the 92 St. Y under the direction of novelist Stephen Wright, who called the ending "perfect." More recently, Ira has taken his novel to groups led by the author Diana Spechler. He will be 70 in October. His years of teaching high school English in Queens are behind him; he now lives with his wife in Teaneck, N.J. His kids and grand-kids are all over the world. Ira is an adjunct instructor at Queensborough Community College and has, through the years, studied and worked with many notable writers, including William Eastlake, Leslie Epstein and Russell Banks. When Ira was in high school, Daniel Keyes was his English teacher. At the time, Keyes was writing Flowers for Algernon.