User:Leonard Kniffel

Leonard Kniffel is a librarian and journalist living in Chicago, Illinois. He was born August 25, 1947, in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, and graduated from Armada High School in 1966. He has a B.A. from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, and master's degrees in English and library science from Wayne State University in Detroit. He worked for eighteen years as a librarian in various capacities at the Detroit Public Library while honing his journalistic skills writing for local magazines and newspapers. He was also one of the founders of the Poetry Resouce Center of Michigan and organizer of the annual Michigan Poetry Festival in the 1980s. In 1988, he moved to Chicago to accept an editorial position with American Libraries, the membership magazine of the American Library Association. In 1997 he became editor-in-chief, a position he held until 2011. He is currently publisher of ALA's public awareness website, www.atyourlibrary.org. He is the author of two books, A Polish Son in the Motherland: An American's Journey Home (Texas A&M University Press, 2005) and Reading with the Stars: A Celebration of Libraries and Books (Skyhorse Publishing and ALA Editions, April 2011).