Gerald Stern is the author of many books of poetry, including American Sonnets: Poems (2002); Last Blue (2000); This Time: New and Selected Poems (1998), winner of the National Book Award; Odd Mercy (1995); Bread Without Sugar (1992), winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize, all from W. W. Norton; Leaving Another Kingdom: Selected Poems (HarperCollins, 1990); Two Long Poems (Carnegie Mellon, 1990); Lovesick (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1987); Paradise Poems (Random House, 1984); The Red Coal (1981), winner of the Melville Caine Award from the Poetry Society of American; and Lucky Life (1977), which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and chosen as the 1977 Lamont Poetry Selection, both from Houghton Mifflin; and Rejoicings (Metro Book Co., 1973).

Four times a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (one as Master Poet for his home state of Pennsylvania), Stern has also been awarded fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He is also the winner of the Paris Review's Bernard Conners Award, the Bess Hokin Award for Poetry, the Ruth Lilly Prize, the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets and the Pennsylvania Governor General's Award for Excellence in the Arts. For many years Stern taught at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. He now lives in Easton, Pennsylvania and New York City.  

Photo by Martin Desht