Richard Lewis is a teacher and author, as well as the Founder and Director of The Touchstone Center for Children (www.touchstonecenter.net), which he began in 1969 in New York City. Known for its innovative artist residency programs in the city's public schools focusing on interdisciplinary explorations of elemental themes of the natural world, The Touchstone Center has also created and presented theatre presentations, exhibitions, and publications for both children and adults – as well as a variety of programs and workshops for teachers and parents focused on the importance of the imaginative and poetic experience in learning.

In addition to his teaching Richard Lewis has edited and written a variety of books about the poetic and imaginative life of childhood, among them being, Miracles: Poems by Children of the English–speaking World; There Are Two Lives: Poems by Children from Japan; and most recently When Thought is Young: Reflections on Teaching and the Poetry of the Child – and Living By Wonder: The Imaginative Life of Childhood. In addition, he has collaborated with illustrators, Ezra Jack Keats, In A Spring Garden; Ashley Bryan, Moon, For What Do You Wait?; Ed Young, All of You Was Singing and In the Night, Still Dark; Debra Frasier, In the Space of the Sky. As part of Touchstone Center Publications, he has also published a number of his original poems, that originated in his work with children, among them being, Each Sky Has Its Words, illustrated by Gigi Alvaré; The Bird of Imagining, illustrated by children from New York City Public Schools; Cave: An Evocation of the Beginnings of Art, illustrated by Elizabeth Crawford and George Hirose; A Tree Lives, illustrated by Noah Bean; We Are Rivers, illustrated by Kathy Creutzburg; Play, Said the Earth to Air, illustrated by Heidi Neilson; and Enchantments of the Earth, illustrated by Carol Grocki Lewis. His most recent books include, I Catch My Moment: Art and Writing by Children on the Life of Play (Touchstone Center Publications); a collection of poems, Shaking the Grass for Dew (New Native Press); and Taking Flight, Standing Still: Teaching Toward the Poetic and Imaginative Understanding of Childhood (Touchstone Center Publications/Codhill Press).

Aside from his teaching and directing the Touchstone Center, he has taught at the Bank Street College of Education, Queens College, Lesley College, Western Washington University, Sarah Lawrence, Rutgers University – and CCNY. His writings on the imaginative life of childhood have appeared in, among others, Orion, Childhood Education, Parabola, Encounter, Pathways, Psychological Perspectives, The New Educator and The Melton Journal.

He has lectured, and given readings and workshops, for both children and adults throughout the United States - most recently at The Dallas Institute, Wave Hill Environmental Center, The University Settlement House, Nantucket Public Library, Jamaica Arts Center, Teachers College, Columbia University – and Poets House in New York City.