Ray McNiece is the author of nine books of poems and monologues, most recently Love Song for Cleveland, a collaboration with photographer Tim Lachina and Breath Burns Away, New Haiku. He toured Russia with Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and he toured Italy twice with legendary beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and was writer in residence at the Kerouac House in Orlando, Florida. He received the Lifetime Achievment Award from the Cleveland Arts Prize in 2021.