Joseph Cuomo was born in Harlem and spent his early years in the south Bronx. He’s debated Jerry Falwell on CNN, interviewed China’s most prominent dissident, Fang Lizhi, before the massacre in Tiananmen, and produced an award-winning public radio documentary on American Fundamentalism, broadcast in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.
The manuscript for his first book of poems was a Finalist for the 2025 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, as well as a Finalist for the Gerald Cable Book Award.
Cuomo’s poems appear in the Boston Review and Evergreen Review. His essay “Delusions of Authenticity and Certainty” also appears in Evergreen.
For many years, he was Director of Queens College Evening Readings, a literary reading series he started in 1976.