My name is Richard Ploetz.  I keep a journal which often is the source for my plays, stories, poems and cartoons.   My wife, Carol, and I live in a fifth-floor walk up in the East Village  where we brought up our daughter, Kathryn. I teach writing at NYU and at Lehman College in the Bronx.  I do commercial voice-overs and recently have begun to produce a satiric history series for television.

My writing began when I joined the Navy and shipped off to Morocco.  Seasick and homesick I began writing long letters to my mother describing my adventures.  These continued letters home evolved into my life long habit of keeping a journal --the basis for much of my writing.  After the Navy I enrolled at Penn State in Geology but found my passion in an English literature class.  And, there my first poems were published in the literary magazine, “The Pivot”.

I find myself now living and writing on Saint Marks Place after teaching in Alaska, homesteading in Vermont and studying at the Yale Drama School and in the Columbia fiction program. 

If you’d like to learn more about me see my resume.