Gerry Albarelli

BA, Sarah Lawrence College. MA, Brown University. Author of Teacha! Stories from a Yeshiva (Glad Day Books, 2001), chronicling his experience as a non-Jew teaching English as a second language to Yiddish-speaking Hasidic boys at a yeshiva in Brooklyn; has published stories in numerous anthologies and reviews, including The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories, Global City Review, The Breast, and Fairleigh Dickinson Review; on the faculty of Eugene Lang College; works for the Columbia University Oral History Research Office, where he has initiated numerous documentary projects; conducted hundreds of life history interviews with gay cops, retired vaudevillians and showgirls, ironworkers, immigrants, and, most recently, people affected by the events of September 11 and veterans recently returned from the war in Iraq. He worked as an educator and project designer on Columbia’s “Telling Lives Oral History Project.” This project, which was launched in eight classrooms in two middle schools in New York City’s Chinatown, culminated in seven books, two documentary films, and a multimedia exhibit. He served as editor of three of the books, producer of the documentaries, and curator of the exhibit. SLC, 2004–