Arts Directory

About

Ken Waldman is writer with 20 books, a fiddler and band leader with 9 CDs, and a performer and educator who appears in the widest range of venues for the widest range of audiences. Often touring as Alaska’s Fiddling Poet, he combines original poetry, old-time string-band music, and smart storytelling for a performance uniquely his. Since 1995 he’s appeared from the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage to the Dodge Poetry Festival to the Woodford Folk Festival (Queensland, Australia). A Duke University graduate, where he majored in Management Sciences, he’s a former college professor with a Creative Writing MFA from University of Alaska Fairbanks. Since 1995, he’s been a visiting writer at over 100 colleges (where he occasionally works with Music Departments and Honors Programs). He’s also visited over 250 schools in 35 states, and works with all ages, from pre-kindergartners to AP high-schoolers as well as with at-risk students.

His 20 books consist of 16 full-length poetry collections, a memoir, a creative writing manual, a children’s book, and a novel. 9 CDs include two for kids. Current projects include three collections of acrostic poems for various ages, from elementary-schoolers to high-schoolers to general audiences, all titled Modern Acrostics. His 2020 hybrid creative writing manual, The Writing Party, is also part memoir of Ken’s work as a writer and teacher, and part full-length collection of poems about writers and writing. The book is a response to many requests for Ken to document his effective, unusual writing prompts.