Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Author of
My Shot: The Education of Lin-Manuel Miranda (Simon & Schuster, 2026)

Daniel is a visiting scholar at Portland State University, the scholar-in-residence at the Portland Shakespeare Project, and a frequent guest lecturer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In 2016, he received the Graves Award from the American Council of Learned Societies for outstanding teaching in the humanities.

His articles on Shakespeare and contemporary culture—from Shakespeare’s language, novel adaptations, and the history of history plays to Lorraine Hansberry, Quiara Alegría Hudes, and Mary Kathryn Nagle—have appeared recently in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. His pandemic spoof, "What Shakespeare Actually Did During the Plague," was made into a short film by PBS.

His current projects include consulting on a documentary film about tribal sovereignty in law and theater, designing a public humanities center in Portland, planning a commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio, and a book for Simon & Schuster about the education of Lin-Manuel Miranda.

He received my B.A. in History from Yale and my Ph.D. in English from Harvard, where I helped to edit the Norton Shakespeare. His met his wife met in a fifth-grade production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. They live with their two children and a puppy in Portland, Oregon.

DanielPollackPelzner.com / Represented by Anne Edelstein