David Daniel was raised in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. For the last decade, he has been poetry editor of the literary journal Ploughshares and has taught literature and poetry writing at Emerson College in Boston. His first full-length collection, Seven-Star Bird (Graywolf, 2003) is the winner of this year’s Levis Reading Prize. He is also the author of a chapbook, The Quick and the Dead (Haw River, 1992). His poems have appeared in such journals as AGNI, Witness, The Literary Review, LILT, Poetry East, the Antioch Review, and Post Road. His essays and reviews have been published in various venues, including The Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Boston Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, and The Journal of Country Music. Daniel is also president and co-founder of the first independent part-time faculty union in the East—the Affiliated Faculty of Emerson College. He received degrees from Vanderbilt University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Virginia, where he was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. Daniel is also a songwriter, and for the next year, he will be touring the country with both his book and his music.  

Photo by Melissa Frost