Larry Moffi

LARRY MOFFI is the author of three nonfiction books on baseball and three collections of poems. In addition to This Side of Cooperstown: An Oral History of Major League Baseball in the 1950s (Dover, 2010; University of Iowa Press, 1996) he is the author of The Conscience of the Game, on the office of the Commissioner of Baseball (University of Nebraska Press, 2007) and, with Jonathan Kronstadt, Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers, 1947 - 1959 (University of Nebraska Press, 2007; University of Iowa Press, 1996; McFarland, 1994). His poetry collections include A Citizen’s Handbook (Orchises Press, Washington, D.C.), A Simple Progression (Ampersand Press, Roger Williams College, Bristol, R.I.) and Homing In (Ridge Road Press, Iowa City, Iowa).

In 2007, after more than thirty years earning a living as a writer and editor–including copy editor with Little, Brown publishers; director of publications for the Associated Writing Programs; managing editor of CommonQuest: The Magazine of Black/​Jewish Relations–I founded, with Joseph Ruth, Settlement House, an independent publisher of poetry. We chose the name Settlement House to acknowledge the contributions made to American culture by the settlement houses that served American immigrants as community centers and in advocacy during the first half of the twentieth century. Settlement House will publish its sixth collection of poems, Polo Sur/​South Pole, a bilingual edition by Venezuelan poet Maria Teresa Ogliastri, in the fall.

Over the years Moffi’s poems have been published in dozens of magazines and journals, including California Quarterly, The Antioch Review, Kansas Quarterly, Poetry, TriQuarterly, The Ohio Review, Crazy Horse, et. al., and in such anthologies as Carrying the Darkness: Poetry of the Vietnam War, Editors’ Choice, Poetic Voices Without Borders, et. al. His freelance work includes book reviews for The Washington Post Book World, Poet Lore and various assignments for the NAACP, The American Jewish Committee, Army Times, USA for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, among others. From 1982 - 1986 he helped coordinate the annual Cracker Jack Old Timers Baseball Classic in Washington, D.C. He holds degrees from Southern Connecticut State College, Trinity College, and the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, where he was a teaching-writing fellow.

Having recently completed a fourth collection of poems, The Donkey Serenade and a collection of short prose pieces entitled Subway Songs and Brief Encounters, I’m now working on the second volume of the This Side of Cooperstown series, which will feature major league ballplayers from the 1960s. I was born in the Bronx, New York, and grew up in Hartford, Connecticut. I’m married to Jacquelyn L. Moffi; we live in Silver Spring, Md.