Mona Van Duyn was born in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1921 and currently lives in St. Louis. She has taught widely, both in the United States and abroad, and has received many awards for her poetry, including the National Book Award, the Bollingen Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was for fifteen years a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She was Poet Laureate of the United States for 1992–1993.
