Ira Silverberg

Ira Silverberg is an American literary agent and editor. For several decades, he has worked in publishing houses like Grove Press, Serpent's Tail, and Simon & Schuster as well as literary agencies like Donadio & Olson and Sterling Lord Literistic. Additionally, he served as the Director of Literary Programs at the National Endowment for the Arts from 2011 to 2013.

Silverberg is currently a member of the adjunct faculty of the MFA Writing Program at Columbia University. He has also taught at The New School as a visiting faculty member and served on various boards and panels for artistic, literary, and cultural organizations in New York City. Additionally, he is the co-founder of Ira Silverberg Communications, a marketing and public relations firm.

Silverberg was born and raised in The Bronx of New York City where he grew up in "a very traditional middle class, Jewish, Bronx family."^[1] In high school, Silverberg began heading to nightclubs in downtown New York; he also worked at Charivari Sport, an Upper West Side clothing store founded by the Weiser family. One night in 1979, at Hurrah, he met Haoui Montaug, after which a brief relationship and long friendship ensued. Montaug was one of many friends and lovers Silverberg lost to AIDS.^[2]

After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science in 1980, Silverberg attended a six-year BA/JD program at the CUNY Urban Legal Studies Center.^[3][4] While in college, Silverberg met James Grauerholz, a friend and assistant of William Burroughs, at a bar in the East Village of Manhattan. They then began a romantic relationship, during which Grauerholz convinced Silverberg to move to Kansas where the two lived and wrote with Burroughs along with other Beat Generation poets.^[5]

From 1982 to 1984, Silverberg attended the University of Kansas. Afterward, he returned to New York and attended Hunter College.^[4] He then dropped out, 18 credits short of a degree, at the age of 22.^[6][1]

In 1984, while at Hunter College, Silverberg began his career as a part-time editorial and publicity assistant at The Overlook Press after first meeting founder Peter Mayer at the 25th anniversary party for Jack Kerouac's On the Road in Boulder, Colorado in 1982; he had attended the party as the guest of Grauerholz and Burroughs.^[4]

Through the 1980s, Silverberg also worked as a doorman at the nightclub The Limelight. Both there and Danceteria, he promoted events beginning in 1984; among them were book launches for Burroughs, artist David Hockney, and writers Brad Gooch and Dennis Cooper, the latter of whom became his client later on.^[6]

In the nineties, Silverberg co-founded High Risk Books, an American imprint of Serpent's Tail.^[1] There, he published locally-originated books like the fiction collection, Disorderly Conduct: The VLS Fiction Reader, edited by The Village Voice editor M. Mark.^[7] In 1994, Silverberg and Amy Scholder went on to co-edit an anthology, titled High Risk: An Anthology of Forbidden Writings, during the AIDS crisis and the culture wars of the time. The anthology featured writings from over 20 authors including Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Dennis Cooper, Essex Hemphill, Mary Gaitskill, Lynne Tillman, Terence Sellers, Bob Flanagan, Cookie Mueller, and others.^[8] Silverberg also worked as Grove Press' editor-in-chief at the time.^[9]

In the 2000s, Silverberg started working as a literary agent at Donadio & Olson before moving to Sterling Lord Literistic in 2008 where he worked until 2011.^[10] At both agencies, he additionally worked as a foreign rights director.^[11] His clients have included Adam Haslett, Christopher Sorrentino, Erica Kennedy, Wayne Koestenbaum, David Wojnarowicz, Neil Strauss, and Rene Steinke.^[3][1]

In 2011, Silverberg was appointed as the Director of Literature Programs for the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C. Two years later, he left his role there, after which Amy Stoll assumed his position.^[3] Silverberg then returned to New York to work as a Strategic Advisor at Open Road Media and as a Senior Editor at Simon and Schuster.^[12] In 2013, Silverberg received the Michele Karlsberg Leadership Award from the Publishing Triangle.^[13][14]

Silverberg has since become affiliated with many artistic, literary, and cultural institutions in New York City including BOMB Magazine and the Member's Council of PEN American Center. He has additionally served as a judge for the Gregory Kolovakos Award for AIDS writing, as well as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Program and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. Moreover, he has acted as an editorial advisor to the Portable Lower East Side, has been a visiting faculty member at The New School, and currently teaches at the MFA Writing Program at Columbia University.^[15] He is also the founder of Ira Silverberg Communications, a marketing and public relations firm.^[16]