About Richard Peabody

Richard Peabody wears many literary hats-- poet, author, literary editor, publisher, teacher, mentor

An Inner Beltway kid who was born in Georgetown, his early years were spent in an apartment above his father’s pet shop, where his life plan was to be an archeologist who played in the NFL part of the year. He has spent the majority of his life in DC, MD, and VA.

He the author of the novella Sugar Mountain, and the short fiction collections Paraffin Days, Open Joints on Bridge, and Blue Suburban Skies. His poetry collections are I’m in Love with the Morton Salt Girl, Echt & Ersatz, Sad Fashions, Buoyancy and Other Myths, Mood Vertigo, Last of the Red Hot Magnetos, Speed Enforced by Aircraft, and Guinness on the Quay. Alan Squire Publications published The Richard Peabody Reader, edited by Lucinda Ebersole, with an introduction by Michael Dirda, as the first book in their Legacy Series in 2015.  

He has edited (or co-edited) 25+ collections including—the Mondo series for St. Martin’s Press (Mondo Barbie [a NY Times Notable Book of the Year and QPBC Selection], Mondo Elvis, Mondo Marilyn, and Mondo James Dean), the first 7 volumes of “Grace and Gravity” the DC area’s women’s fiction series (Grace and Gravity, Enhanced Gravity, Electric Grace, Gravity Dancers, Amazing Graces, Defying Gravity, and Abundant Grace), as well as A Different Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat Generation (Serpent’s Tail/High Risk), Coming to Terms: A Literary Response to Abortion (The New Press), and  Conversations with Gore Vidal (U. of Mississippi).

Short fiction, poems, reviews, and essays have appeared in AB Bookman’s Weekly, The Athens NEWS, Baltimore City Paper, Baltimore Sun Magazine, Barcelona Review, Beat Scene, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Black Sun, Columbus Dispatch, Contemporary Literary Criticism, DC City Paper, Delmarva Review, Dirty Linen, Fiction Writer’s Market, The Futurist, The Hollins Critic, jmww, Kansas Quarterly, Kestrel, Kuchibashi, Library Quarterly, Lips, The Literarian, Mamaphonic, McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, North American Review, Paterson Literary Review, The Pedestal, Poet Lore, Poetry East, Posit, Potomac Review, Santa Fe Poetry Broadside, Spitball, Taos Review, Tiferet Journal, Trouser Press, USA Today, Vallum, Washington Post Book World, Washington Review, Washingtonian, WETA Magazine, Word Riot, and many others.

Peabody taught fiction workshops for 17 years in the MA Program in Writing at Johns Hopkins University, plus 16 years of writing workshops at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD.

Peabody has served on the Board of Directors of the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD, and the Washington Project for the Arts. He won both the Excellence in Teaching Award and the Award for Outstanding Professional Achievement from Johns Hopkins University. Other awards for his literary service and citizenship include the 2013 Above and Beyond Award from Beyond the Margins, as well as the Editor’s Award from the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines (now CLMP), a special Larry Neal Writers’ Award from DC Mayor Marion Barry, as well as the DCAC Arts Award, plus individual artist’s grants from Arlington County, VA., Montgomery County, MD, and the state of Maryland.

He has judged individual Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry grants for the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, as well as state writing grants for Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Texas, Wisconsin, and contests for the Writer’s Voice Capricorn Award, DC City Paper, Dogfish Ale, Folio, the Larry Neal Writer’s Conference, Mount Vernon College, Phoebe, the South Asian Literary Conference, the Washington Prize, and Word Works. 

Residencies include:  Blue Mountain Center, Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, Porches, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

His work has been anthologized in many books, including Blue Cathedral: Short Fiction for the New Millennium, DC Poets Against the War, Explosions: Stories of Our Land Mined World, I Feel Jumpy Around You, The Incredible Sestinas Book, Poetic Voices without Borders (Vol 1 & 2), Poets Against the War, Respect: The Poetry of Detroit Music, Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry, and Working Words: A Working Class & Labor Literature Reader.

He is the founder of Paycock Press and co-founder of Gargoyle Magazine, a print magazine from 1976-1990 and again from 1997-2021, before transforming into an online journal in 2022. 

Visit his blog.