Hal Sirowitz
Hal Sirowitz’s new collection, Before, During & After, is all about the one word its title leaves out: sex. Hal shares the ups and downs of his romantic history from adolescence to adulthood and lets his girlfriends do most of the talking—the one with the perfect ass, the one who still lives with her ex, the one who demands a signed statement from his therapist, the celibate, the one who gives his penis a Spanish name, and all the rest. Sometimes Hal strikes out, sometimes he gets lucky, but he kisses and tells in the inimitable Sirowitz style that has inspired hilarity and Hal-O-Mania from New York to Norway.
Before, During & After joins Hal’s previous books Mother Said and My Therapist Said to form a trilogy of side-splitting, honest, and unforgettable glimpses into the life of everybody’s favorite pessimist.
Hal Sirowitz is the author of two books of poems, Mother Said and My Therapist Said. He has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship is a 2003-2004 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow. In 2001, Sirowitz was named Poet Laureate of Queens, New York. His poems have been widely anthologized in collections such as Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems and in Poetry in Motion from Coast to Coast. He has performed on MTV’s Spoken Word Unplugged, PBS’s Poetry Heaven, and NPR’s All Things Considered. Garrison Keillor has read Sirowitz’s work on NPR’s Writer’s Almanac. Sirowitz works as a special education teacher for the New York City public schools.
