Mark Doty is the author of nine collections of poetry including, Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins, 2008), recipient of the 2008 National Book Award for Poetry, and My Alexandria (University of Illinois Press, 1993), winner of the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of three memoirs: Dog Years (HarperCollins, 2008), a New York Times bestseller; Firebird (HarperCollins, 1999); and Heaven’s Coast (HarperCollins, 1997), which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. A new prose book on Walt Whitman’s life and work, What is the Grass, is forthcoming in 2019, the 200th anniversary of the poet’s birth. Doty is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Fund, the Ingram-Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a professor at Rutgers University.