Steve Zeitlin

Steve Zeitlin is the founding director of City Lore, an organization dedicated to the preservation of New York City's—and America's—living cultural heritage. Prior to arriving in New York, Zeitlin served for eight years as a folklorist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He has taught at George Washington University, American University, New York University, and Cooper Union. Zeitlin has served as a regular commentator for the nationally syndicated radio shows Crossroads and Artbeat, and he develops segments on "The Poetry of Everyday Life" for The Next Big Thing, heard on National Public Radio. He is the author and co-author of a number of award-winning books on America's folk culture including A Celebration of American Family Folklore (Pantheon Books, 1982); The Grand Generation: Memory Mastery and Legacy (U. of Washington Press, 1987); City Play (Rutgers University Press, 1990); Because God Loves Stories: An Anthology of Jewish Storytelling (Simon & Schuster, 1997); and Giving a Voice to Sorrow: Personal Responses to Death and Mourning (Penguin-Putnam, 2001). Zeitlin has served on various panels at the Center—most recently as a management panelist in 2011.