Gerald Stern was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1925 and was educated at the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University. He did post-graduate study at the University of Paris in 1949-50.

He is the author of fourteen books of poetry including, This Time: New and Selected Poems, which won the National Book Award in 1998, and most recently Everything is Burning published in 2005, both from W.W. Norton. A collection of personal essays titled What I Can’t Bear Losing: Notes From a Life was released in the fall of 2003, also by W.W. Norton.

He has taught at many universities including, the University of Pittsburgh, Columbia University, and for fifteen years was senior poet at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is the recipient of many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, three National Endowment of the Arts Fellowships, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts for the State of Pennsylvania, the Lamont Poetry Prize and the Ruth Lilly Prize. He was the first Poet Laureate of New Jersey, serving from 2000 to 2002 and was the recipient of both the 2005 Wallace Steven Award for mastery for in the art of poetry and the 2005 National Jewish Book Award for poetry. In 2006 Stern was named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Stern lives today in Lambertville, New Jersey.