Richard Byrne lives in Washington, DC. He is an editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education.
His writing has been published in the The Guardian, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The American Prospect and on Time magazine's web site. He was also a contributing writer for New York Press and the Boston Phoenix. He is former executive editor at the Globalist.
In 1999, Byrne was awarded a Pew Fellowship in International Reporting (now known as the International Reporting Project Fellowship) to study media in postwar Bosnia.
Byrne is also an award-winning playwright. His first play, Untangling Ava, won the inaugural A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival at Washington University in St. Louis. The play was produced in the Drama Studio at that university in May 1989.
His second play, Burn Your Bookes (sic), won first prize in the 2007 Prague Post Playwriting Festival. It was produced at the Dicadlo Minor in Prague in March, 2007.
As a music critic, his work has appeared as liner notes for albums by R.E.M. and Uncle Tupelo.
Byrne received his B.A. in English from the University of Maryland at Baltimore Country in 1986. He has an M.F.A. in poetry and playwriting from Washington University in St. Louis.
