Biography: David Garrett Izzo

1950- b. New York City, novelist, dramatist, scholar, literary critic, David was born and raised in Queens NY. From 1972-1985 he worked in New York as a writer and editor. In 1985 David fulfilled a desire to teach and became an English teacher at Cardozo High School, a magnet school and one of the most recognized high schools in the U.S. In 1988, with his boss, John Walsh, he co-wrote an integrated reading/writing/literature curriculum first implemented at Cardozo and then in all of the high schools in Queens. Since 1990 Mr. Walsh has taught this curriculum to teachers. In 1991 David and his wife Carol moved to Chapel Hill N.C. where he became an administrator/English instructor at a community college while his wife attended graduate School at UNC-Chapel Hill. In 1999, they moved again to California for Carol's first position as a professor. They missed the East Coast and returned in 2001 to Washington D.C., then Douglassville, PA in July 2002, where David completed course work for a PhD at Temple University, and back to the Chapel Hill area in Dec. 2003. David and Carol like staying at home with their cats, Huxley, Max, and Princess who are featured in his fantasy novella Catland, and the latest cat, Phoebe.
David's recent efforts in writing about authors and their work began with his interest in Vedanta philosophy (the ancient East Indian Vedic scriptures such as the Bhagavad-Gita and the Upanishads), which led him to the mystical writings of Aldous Huxley, then Christopher Isherwood, which turned to his being a fan of both and their literary work. This led to W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender and the Auden Generation in general, which took him to a more diversified interest in the 1920s and 1930s in both the U.K. and U.S. The Auden gang is counter pointed by the Yale club of Stephen Vincent Benet, Archibald MacLeish, and Thornton Wilder. Both groups are the umbrellas over dozens of more literary figures from their eras. Izzo is a collector and has first editions of his core writers and many others, as well as over 300 signed books, letters, etc. The one notable exception out of this period is the brilliant contemporary American writer Richard Stern. Since 1996, Izzo has written or edited many non-fiction books, a historical novel, a historical play, and 31 articles on these figures that are already in print or will be in print by mid 2004.
The books he has written are the mystical fantasy, Catland, the novel about the Huxley and Auden gangs, A Change of Heart (2003) nominated for three awards; a one-man play, The American World of Stephen Benet that Izzo originally wrote and performed for Benet's centenary in 1998 in Benet's birthplace of Bethlehem, PA, and that was published in 1999; and the short play of urban tragedy, “Wrath,” performed and published in 2003; five scholarly studies, Aldous Huxley and W. H. Auden On Language (1998), Christopher Isherwood: His Era, His Gang, and the Legacy of the Truly Strong Man (2001, nominated for Phi Beta Kappa and MLA awards in literary criticism), The Writings of Richard Stern: The Education of an Intellectual Everyman (2001), W.H. Auden Encyclopedia (2004), and Christopher Isherwood Encyclopedia (2005). He has edited and contributed to two essay collections, W.H. Auden: A Legacy (2002), and Advocates and Activists: 1919-1941(2003), and he has co-edited and contributed to two more essay collections, Thornton Wilder: New Essays (1998, Blank, Brunauer), and Stephen Vincent Benet (2002, Konkle). Izzo's work on Thornton Wilder has won him acclaim in Russia where Wilder is revered. The articles have been on Auden, Huxley, Isherwood, Gerald Heard, AE (George Russell), Benet, MacLeish, Wilder, Elinor Wylie, Conrad Aiken, Carl Sandburg, Scott Nearing, V. F. Calverton, Paul Rosenfeld, Lew Sarett, Genevieve Taggard, Sara Teasdale, Vachel Lindsay, Zona Gale, Ezra Pound, and Richard Stern. Izzo is currently co-editing with Daniel O'Hara of Temple University, a collection of essays on Henry James and the Aesthetic Movement (2006). There will also be collections on Charles Chesnutt and three of Aldous Huxley's novels: Point Counterpoint, Time Must Have a Stop, and Brave New World.