Edward Hirsch is a poet, a teacher, a literary critic, and a tireless advocate for poetry. He was born in Chicago in 1950. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a Pablo Neruda Presidential Medal of Honor, the Prix de Rome, and an Academy of Arts and Letters Award. Hirsch is the author of four prose books, including Poet’s Choice (2006), which consists of his popular columns from the Washington Post Book World, and How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry (1999), Edward Hirsch taught for six years in the English Department at Wayne State University.