Eric Felderman

Concerning the perpetrator: Possessed at an early age by the dreaded writing mania, he won the Poetry Prize in New York City's Jr. High School Contest, and strangely enough, thereafter, at the age of twelve, was interviewed on an arts program broadcast over WNYC Radio, and blithely instructed the world on his theories of poetry. In High School twice won Poetry First Prize in the nation-wide "National Scholastic Magazine" contest. At both Columbia and Cornell won the Academy of American Poets Prize. His constant drawing also started in early childhood. (His uncle was the realist sculptor Mitchell Fields, whose works are in museum collections around the world.)

After graduating from The Bronx High School of Science, he received a National Merit Scholarship, and a New York State Regents Scholarship, with one of the five highest scores on the New York State-wide exam. A.B. degree magna cum laude at Columbia College, Columbia University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Unfazed by these academic exertions, the indefatigable young victim of the dreaded knowledge-hoarding mania pressed on: M.A. degree at Cornell University, where he studied on an Andrew D. White Fellowship; Ph.D. degree at S.U.N.Y. at Buffalo, where he studied on an N.D.E.A. Fellowship. He taught for five years as an Assistant Professor of English at Yale University.

Author of several books, including, among others, "Animal Book," and a memoir of childhood which was called "a minor masterpiece" when it was reviewed in "Booklist." About his early writing, poet and critic Winfield Townley Scott wrote in "National Scholastic Magazine": "There is a kind of magic happening."