Policoff, Stephen Phillip 1948-

PERSONAL:

Born April 27, 1948, in Richmond, VA; son of Leonard David (a physician) and Naomi (an artist and printmaker) Policoff; married Kathleen Mary Beck (a sales manager), April 29, 1989. Education: Wesleyan University, B.A., 1970.

ADDRESSES:

Home—5 W. 87th St., New York, NY 10024. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 245 W. 17th St., 11th Fl., New York, NY 10011-5300.

CAREER:

Writer. Center for Creative Youth, Middletown, CT, director of creative writing, beginning 1978; New York University, New York, NY, adjunct assistant professor of creative writing, beginning 1986. Medicine Show Theater Ensemble, literary manager, 1979-86.

MEMBER:

Dramatists Guild, Authors League of America, American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Commission from Lincoln Center, to write libretto; National Endowment for the Arts grant, to write libretto for Bound to Rise.

WRITINGS:

(Author of libretto) Bound to Rise (stage musical; based on the writings of Horatio Alger), music by Robert Dennis, first produced in New York, NY, 1984.

(Author of libretto) East of the Sun, West of the Moon (opera for children), music by Robert Dennis, produced in New York, NY, at the Lincoln Center Institute, 1990.

(With Jeffrey Skinner) Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens: Suggestions and Starting Points for Young Creative Writers, Chicago Review Press (Chicago, IL), 1992.

The Dreamer's Companion: A Young Person's Guide to Understanding Dreams and Using Them Creatively, Chicago Review Press (Chicago, IL), 1997.

Cesar's Amazing Journey, Viking (New York, NY), 1999.

Beautiful Somewhere Else (novel), Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to periodicals, including Seventeen, Parents, and Ladies Home Journal.

SIDELIGHTS:

Stephen Phillip Policoff is a novelist, playwright, and educator. A number of his works are geared toward teens and children, guiding and encouraging younger readers toward greater creative exploration. Along with Jeffrey Skinner, for example, he has written

Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens: Suggestions and Starting Points for Young Creative Writers, a guide for teenage writers seeking insight into the creative process. The text is based on material drawn from the writing classes taught by Skinner and Policoff, both award-winning writers. Discussions on writing poems and plays are included, as well as suggestions on fiction writing. The text includes suggestions on specific topics such as character development, plot, and voice, as well as on manuscript revision. Though the book is designed for aspiring writers in approximately the eighth through twelfth grades, reviewers have felt it would be a useful and valuable guide for readers of all ages. For example, Susan H. Patron wrote in School Library Journal that "this handbook speaks directly to the experiences and viewpoints of" young adults.

Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens is organized into two main categories: Skinner focuses on poetry, while Policoff enlightens students on fiction. These teachers insist on hard work to help their young authors-to-be grasp the basic concepts of writing. These ideas are reinforced through examples that were written by children that Skinner and Policoff have taught in their classes. Policoff once told CA: "Writing a book about writing was never one of my dreams, but my coauthor and I have had great success exhorting teens to channel their incredible creative drive in our work at the Center for Creative Youth (and elsewhere), and it seemed to us that we could capture the immediacy of our teaching experiences by writing the book as if we were simply having a lengthy chat with the kids, and by making use of the wonderful writing we have managed to squeeze out of our students over the years, as examples of how to make use of our advice. The response to the book has been gratifying. I remember well feeling the yearning to write but being unsure how to begin. Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens, we hope, lights the path."

The Dreamer's Companion: A Young Person's Guide to Understanding Dreams and Using Them Creatively provides an introduction to the interpretation of dreams. Policoff covers topics such as lucid dreaming, analyzing dreams, and maintaining a dream journal. Other material covers dream interpretation in other cultures, neurochemicals and dreaming, and the relationship between two pioneering dream advocates: Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Reviewer Ilene Cooper remarked in Booklist that the book's tone might register as artificially friendly to the intended audience of young readers. However, the critic also observed that the "material is so interesting" that the book's readers will be able to overlook the tone and will "start taking some of Policoff's suggestions for delving into their dreams."

In addition to her nonfiction for young readers, Policoff is a librettist and fiction writer. Her adult novel Beautiful Somewhere Else "shows a flair for pithy characterizations," according to Booklist reviewer Joanne Wilkinson. Thirty-eight-year-old divorcé Paul Brickner and his girlfriend, Nadia, who is almost twenty years his junior, take a vacation to Cape Cod to get some relief from the turmoil in their lives. They are accompanied by houseguests Jennifer, Nadia's friend whose excessive piercings and body modifications express serious self-hatred, and Tommy, Paul's oldest friend, who suffers from manic-depression and difficulty dealing with leftover emotions after his father's death. Both Paul and Nadia have troublesome people in their past: Paul has his second ex-wife, Annie, from a disastrous marriage that ended with the death of their infant child; Nadia has Fred, an obsessive, possibly mentally unstable ex-boyfriend. Paul hopes to do research on enigmatic Chinese escape artist Sung Soo, a contemporary of Houdini who mysteriously disappeared, but there is little hope for that in the turbulence that follows the start of their vacation. Shortly after Paul and Nadia arrive on the Cape, Fred shows up uninvited, intent on proving his unfailing love for Nadia and ranting about seeing lights, encountering UFOs, and being abducted by aliens. Fred's stories take on more credibility when it is discovered that Tommy and Paul have both seen these unusual lights, as well, which appear to have some connection to the disappearance of Sung Soo. As the multiple characters interact and the inner turmoil begins to percolate, an external force bears down on all the characters in the form of Hurricane Bob, forcing them into clashes with nature, themselves, and each other. Wilkinson commented favorably on Policoff's "vivid descriptive skills" and "low-key, subtle sense of humor."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 1992, Hazel Rochman, review of Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens: Suggestions and Starting Points for Young Creative Writers, p. 1753; May 15, 1998, Ilene Cooper, review of The Dreamer's Companion: A Young Person's Guide to Understanding Dreams and Using Them Creatively, p. 1616; March 15, 2004, Joanne Wilkinson, review of Beautiful Somewhere Else, p. 1266.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2004, review of Beautiful Somewhere Else, p. 106.

Publishers Weekly, April 5, 2004, review of Beautiful Somewhere Else, p. 35.

School Library Journal, April, 1992, Susan H. Patron, review of Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens, p. 158.