Lee Papa is the chair of the Department of English at the College of Staten Island, part of the City University of New York, where he has taught since 2003. He teaches courses in playwriting and dramatic literature, and he regularly directs plays at CSI.
As a writer, he is the political blogger known as “The Rude Pundit,” whose work has been cited by news outlets as from the Washington Post to Fox News to People magazine. He is also a playwright, director, and actor who has written and performed sold-out solo shows in the U.S. and Canada, most recently in January 2020 at in Calgary. The New York Times called him "a tornado of a writer" and "a child of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and Hunter S. Thompson." In the 1990s, Lee was a graduate student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville where produced the show Radio Free Theatre, which broadcast new radio plays every week. He has directed plays in Knoxville’s Shakespeare in the Park and given writing and performance workshops everywhere from rural Tennessee to Denmark.
Degrees
BA, University of Southwestern Louisiana
MA, University of Southwestern Louisiana
PhD, University of Tennessee
Books:
The Rude Pundit's Almanack. New York: OR Books, 2012.
Staged Action: Six Plays from the American Workers' Theatre. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 2009.
Plays:
It's the End of the World As We Know It... One Yellow Rabbit Theatre. Calgary, AB, Canada. 2020.
Heterosexuals. New York International Fringe Festival. 2010.
The Road to Rude. One Yellow Rabbit Theatre. 2007.
The Year of Living Rudely. New York International Fringe Festival. 2005.
