Phillip Lopate was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1943, and received a BA from Columbia in 1964, and a doctorate from the Union Graduate School in 1979.
He has written three personal essay collections, two novels, two poetry collections, a collection of movie criticism, an urbanist meditation, and a biographical monograph.
He has edited numerous anthologies, and his essays, fiction, poetry, film, and architectural criticism have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New York Times, The Paris Review, and many other periodicals and anthologies.
He currently holds the John Cranford Adams Chair at Hofstra University, and also teaches in the MFA graduate programs at Columbia, the New School, and Bennington.