2010 Presenters
Edward Hirsch
Born in Chicago in 1950, Edward Hirsch fell in love with poetry after reading an Emily Bronte verse he found in his grandfather’s basement. He went on to study poetry at Grinnell College and received his Ph.D. in Folklore from the University of Pennsylvania.
Hirsch’s first collection of verse For the Sleepwalkers (1981) received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University. His second collection Wild Gratitude received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1986. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1985, a five-year MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1987 and the William Riley Parker Prize from the Modern Language Association for the best scholarly essay in Proceedings of the Modern Language Association in 1991.
His essays have also been published in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, American Poetry Review, and The Paris Review, and he continues to write a weekly column on poetry for the Washington Post Book World. His How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, was a surprise bestseller in 1999 and remains in print through multiple printings.
Hirsch is currently the president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
LINKS:
Archived news and articles about Hirsch from The New York Times
Publisher's page on The Living Fire
Hirsch answers readers' questions
Review of The Living Fire from The New York Times
