Bio

George McDermott has spent his entire career teaching various constituencies—including many who already hold bachelor’s, master’s and even doctoral degrees—how to communicate.

As a writer and editor he has, at one time or another, written everything from advertising copy to scholarly articles, from speeches and screenplays to newsletters and op-ed pieces, and from annual reports to creative nonfiction. (That last pair isn’t as disparate as they might at first appear.)

George’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in a range of regional and national literary quarterlies—including Pivot, Clarion, Philadelphia Poets, and Painted Bride Quarterly —as well as in the Philadelphia Inquirer and anthologies. He was also, for the first six years of its existence, a poetry editor of the quarterly Philadelphia Stories.

As an educator, he has taught a diverse range of students—in all middle-school and high-school grades, as well as adults; in communities characterized by rural poverty, suburban near-affluence, and inner-city poverty; in central schools, charter schools, and neighborhood schools. He has taught middle-school language arts and both mainstream and Honors high-school English, as well as elective courses in screenwriting, cinematography and film production, classical literature, poetry, creative writing, journalism, public speaking, and Adult Basic Literacy.

He completed his doctoral coursework (ABD) in Media Ecology at New York University, studying under Neil Postman, founder of the program and seminal influence in the birth of the discipline. He received his M.A. in English and Education from SUNY University at Albany, and his B.A. in English from Harvard University.