Found in Translation: The Poetry of Art Beck

Some writers pick pen names in order to write with a greater sense of freedom.

Some writers, like Centrum creative resident Dennis Dybeck, pick them because they work as a bill collector.

Dybeck selected the pseudonym Art Beck in his early twenties, when he worked for a bill-collecting agency. "The collection manager told us “no one’s mother raised them to be a bill collector. To do the things I’m going to want you to do, you need to pick a phony name,” Dybeck says. He selected the named "Art Beck." Later, when he turned to writing poetry, he kept it as a nom de plume.