 Gelber continued to work and write in New York, where he also taught writing, directing and drama as a professor, chiefly at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, where he created the MFA program in playwriting.In 1999 he received the Edward Albee Last Frontier Playwright Award in recognition of his lifetime of achievements in theatre.Jack Gelber was born April 12, 1932 in Chicago, the first of three sons of Molly (Singer) and Harold Gelber, a Jewish American couple of Russian and Romanian descent.