Biographie
Richard Pacheco, an only child born after 21 years of marriage, was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts. His father, Joseph, was a Portuguese immigrant from Sao Miguel in the Azores, and his mother, Helen, came from a Portuguese immigrant family and was born in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
He graduated from New Bedford High School and was married to Mary Jane Sumner for ten years before their divorce in 1981. He earned both his BFA in painting and MFA in printmaking, sculpture, and teaching from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. In his 1981 divorce, he gained custody of their three children: Joel, Jennifer, and Jonathan.
While raising his children and teaching, he also worked as an arts writer and journalist for the New Bedford Standard-Times for 23 years. He retired from teaching in 2003 and has since pursued a career as a professional actor, director, and playwright. He performs on stage, film, and television, and is also an artist, teacher, poet, journalist, playwright, and fiction writer. He has one grandchild, Sean Pacheco.
His poetry book, "Geography," was nominated for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize. His play "Swann Song" won the Best New Play award from the American Regional Theatre Awards (ARTA) in 1987, and he received another ARTA award in 1988 for his arts writing for the New Bedford Standard-Times.
He is recognized as a prominent artist in the 1988 edition of the New York Art Review.
