Philip Levine is the author of sixteen books of poetry, most recently Breath (2004) and The Mercy (1998). His books have received many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for The Simple Truth and the National Book Award in 1991 for What Work Is (both from Knopf), as well as a National Book Award in 1976 for Ashes: Poems New and Old. He has also published So Ask: Essays, Conversations, and Interviews (2002) and The Bread of Time: Toward an Autobiography (1994), both from the University of Michigan; edited The Essential Keats (1987), and co-edited and translated two books: Off the Map: Selected Poems of Gloria Fuertes (with Ada Long, 1984) and Tarumba: The Selected Poems of Jaime Sabines (with Ernesto Trejo, 1979). Levine has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize from Poetry, the Frank O'Hara Prize, and two John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowships. For two years he served as chair of the Literature Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts, and he was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2000.  

Photo by Frances Levine