John DeWitt Gregory Writer-in-Residence

The Bronx Letters Foundation is pleased to announce that Sergio Jimenez will serve as the John DeWitt Gregory Writer-in-Residence for the 2023-24 school year at Urban Assembly Bronx Academy of Letters, thanks to the generosity of the John DeWitt Gregory Charitable Trust. We are grateful for three years of a productive and impactful partnership.

honoring a legACY

Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Law at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, John DeWitt Gregory died on July 27, 2020, at the age of 89, after a lifelong pursuit of economic and racial justice. According to a representative of the trust, “John Gregory was a passionate supporter during his lifetime of many charitable causes, especially those in the area of civil rights and the arts. He was also a passionate reader, turning more and more as he grew older to the work of African-American writers. He spoke many times of his wish to support young writers and to encourage their voices. It would have given him great pleasure to see his charitable trust sponsor the poet-in-residence at Bronx Letters.” 

Professor Gregory was perhaps the first African-American Vice-Dean of a law school when he was appointed in 1986 to that position at Hofstra, where he spent his entire academic career and served as the Walter Siben Distinguished Professor of Family Law until his transition to emeritus status in 2013. He was the co-author of Understanding Family Law and frequently wrote on child custody and visitation issues.

No stranger to the challenges of pioneering, he graduated from Howard University, then went on to serve in the Korean War, and eventually graduated Harvard Law School in 1959, at a time when minority enrollment was present in very small numbers. John pursued a career that included private practice, various public interest organizations, government agencies and legal education. 

WRITER SERGIO JIMENEZ

Sergio Jimenez is a spoken word artist and educator who hails from the Bronx. An alum and teaching artist with Urban Word NYC, Sergio has also taught for Cooper Union College, CityLore, Project X, Dreamyard, and a variety of public and private schools across the country. With a discipline in poetry, performance, and visual arts, Sergio has featured in theaters such as The Apollo, The Mist and The Snapple Theater and his teaching has been spotlighted on Telemundo and NY1 News. He has also competed in a variety of poetry slams across the country, including Virginia, Chicago, Texas and Boston. Sergio continues to teach and perform across the city, and he is featured in a documentary directed by Teresa Castillo from The Bronx Documentary Center narrating his personal life, staying close to home as a father, a poet, and a growing individual.