In May of 2010, 22-year-old Jeffrey Zuckerman graduated from Yale University with a BA in English. He had planned to be a French major, but his talent took him in another direction.
Jeffrey doesn’t like to brag, but his parents, Lois and David, don’t mind. After Yale’s commencement ceremony, they witnessed a professor enthusiastically telling their son to keep writing, and to send him more over the summer. That professor was Michael Cunningham, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Hours. Lois said U.S. Poet Laureate Louise Glűck, another instructor at Yale, praised Jeffrey’s command of the English language, without qualification.
Jeffrey was born deaf. His parents attribute much of his success to eight years of learning to talk at CID - Central Institute for the Deaf (1988–1995), starting when he was a year old. He received a cochlear implant at age 8. “When Jeff was little, I remember one of his teachers patiently helping him learn to say the sound of every letter, one at a time,” David said. “As he got older, his teachers always pushed him to perform at his ability level.”
After completing a stint in book publishing, Jeffrey has moved to New York City to pursue a career in editing and translation. He is currently (of course) at work on a novel.
You can follow Jeffrey and read some of his latest writing on his blog!
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