Dick Polman is the Maury Povich Writer-in-Residence, a member of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW) faculty, and writer of a newsletter each week at dickpolman.substack.com. His previous work, as a political columnist, is archived at dickpolman.net. Dick was a 22-year staff writer on The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he covered five presidential campaigns as the paper’s national political writer and columnist; he helmed the London bureau as a foreign correspondent; he covered the Philadelphia Phillies as a baseball beat writer; he was a roving national correspondent; and as a regular contributor to the Inquirer’s Sunday magazine, he wrote long-form pieces on everything from Nazi war criminals to the comeback of the condom. He has written 33 pieces on national politics for The Atlantic, and has free-lanced for Politico Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, and the Knight Foundation. Before moving to Philadelphia, he wrote three columns a week for The Hartford Courant, and was the founding editor of an alternative newspaper, the Hartford Advocate, where he also wrote a weekly column. Dick attended George Washington University, where he served as managing editor of the college newspaper, and graduated with a BA in public affairs in 1973. He first came to Penn in 1999, when he audited classes during a one-semester fellowship, and he started teaching at Penn in 2003. In public events at the Kelly Writers House, he hosts as many as six prominent journalists a year—his happy routine since 2006. Dick lives in Center City, his son is a senior projects manager at Comcast HQ, and his daughter is a website designer based in West Philadelphia.
