Charles Simic was born on May 9, 1938, in Belgrade , Yugoslavia. His first poems were published in 1959, when he was twenty-one. In 1961 he was drafted into the U.S. Army, and in 1966 he earned his Bachelor’s degree from New York University.

His first full-length collection of poems, What the Grass Says, was published the following year. Since then he has published more than sixty books in the U.S. and abroad, twenty titles of his own poetry among them, including That Little Something (Harcourt, 2008), My Noiseless Entourage (2005); Selected Poems: 1963-2003 (2004), for which he received the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize; The Voice at 3:00 AM: Selected Late and New Poems (2003); Night Picnic (2001); The Book of Gods and Devils (2000); and Jackstraws (1999), which was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times. His other books of poetry include Walking the Black Cat (1996), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; A Wedding in Hell (1994); Hotel Insomnia (1992); The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems (1990), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Selected Poems: 1963-1983 (1990); and Unending Blues (1986).

Simic has also published numerous translations of French, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, and Slovenian poetry, and is the author of several books of essays, including Orphan Factory. He has edited several anthologies, including an edition of The Best American Poetry in 1992.

Simic was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry in 2007. He was also chosen to receive the Academy Fellowship in 1998, and elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2000. He has received numerous awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1995. Most recently, he was announced as the recipient of the 2007 Wallace Stevens Award by the Academy of American Poets. Simic is Emeritus Professor of the University of New Hampshire where he has taught since 1973.

Link: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/27

Selected Bibliography:
Monkey Around (2006)
My Noiseless Entourage: Poems (2005)
Selected Poems: 1963-2003 (2004)
The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems (2003)
Night Picnic: Poems (2001)
The Book of Gods and Devils (2000)
Jackstraws (1999)
Walking the Black Cat (1996)
The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems (1990)

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Editors

Founder: Ronald Sukenick

Publisher: Jeffrey R. Di Leo

Editor: Jeffrey R. Di Leo

Managing Editor: Jeffrey A. Sartain

Assistant Editor: Lauren Pirosko

Publisher Emeritus: Charles B. Harris

Associate Editors: Charles Alexander, Mark Amerika, R.M. Berry, Dagoberto Gilb, C. S. Giscombe, Dinda L. Gorlée, Charles Johnson, Cris Mazza, Larry McCaffery, Christina Milletti, Doug Nufer, Kevin Prufer, John Tytell, Barry Wallenstein, Tom Williams, Eric Miles Williamson

Contributing Editors: Rudolfo Anaya, Ron Arias, John Ashbery, Michael Bérubé, Rosellen Brown, Andrei Codrescu, William Demby, Rikki Ducornet, William Gass, Joseph D. Haske, Russell Hoover, Steve Katz, Clarence Major, Carole Maso, Michael McClure, Joyce Carol Oates, Daniel T. O'Hara, Marjorie Perloff, Robert Peters, Corinne Robins, Charles Russell, Paul Schiavo, Barry Seiler, Charles Simic, Bruce Sterling, Regina Weinreich