Bio
A former Chicago social worker, Peter Kahn has been an English teacher since 1994 and a Spoken Word Educator since 2003 at Oak Park/River Forest High School. His students can be seen in Louder Than a Bomb and America to Me. A founding member of the London poetry collective Malika’s Kitchen, he co-founded the London Teenage Poetry Slam and, as a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths-University of London, created the Spoken Word Education Training Programme. He earned his MA in English Education from The Ohio State University, student taught at Columbus East High School and taught for the Young Scholars Program. Peter was a featured speaker at the National Council of Teachers of English’s annual convention and runner-up in the NCTE and Penguin Random House Maya Angelou Teacher Award for Poetry. Along with Patricia Smith and Ravi Shankar, he edited The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks reviewed in The New York Times by Claudia Rankine. Along with Hanif Abdurraqib, Franny Choi, and former student Dan “Sully” Sullivan, he edited Respect the Mic: Celebrating 20 Years of Poetry from a Chicagoland High School, deemed “Electric and Expansive” by Kirkus Reviews. Peter’s 2020 poetry collection, Little Kings has poems featured in The London Guardian and The Forward Book of Poetry.
Education
December, 2016
Summer 2011 & 2014
December, 1993
May, 1989
Fairfield University, Fairfield and Enders Island, CT
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing
Stony Brook University, Southampton, NY
Graduate credits earned through the Creative Writing MFA program
The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
Master of Arts plus high school certification in English Education
Tufts University, Medford, MA
Bachelor of Arts in English
Through the years students have compiled and ritually contributed to a fun and unique list of puns surrounding my name. I’d like to share that amazing list of Kahn Puns with you.