Photo: Kathleen Rutledge Bibliography Selection Commentary Buy a Book Writers On-Line

Born in Ames, Iowa, in 1939, TED KOOSER is one of Nebraska's most highly regarded poets and the country's newest Poet Laureate of the United States. He earned a BS at Iowa State University in 1962 and the MA at the University of Nebraska in 1968. He is the author of ten collections of poetry, including Sure Signs (Pittsburgh, 1980), One World at a Time (Pittsburh, 1985), Weather Central (Pittsburgh, 1994), Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison (Carnegie-Mellon UP, 2000), winner of the 2001 Nebraska Book Award for poetry, and Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry (Copper Canyon, 2003), written with his longtime friend, Jim Harrison. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The Hudson Review, The Kenyon Review, Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. His poems appear regularly in textbooks and anthologies currently in use in secondary schools and college classrooms across the country. Among other awards and distinctions he has received two NEA fellowships in poetry, the Pushcart Prize, the Stanley Kunitz Prize, The James Boatwright Prize, The Society of Midland Authors Prize (twice), and a Merit Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. A book of prose, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (U of Nebraska P, 2002), won the Nebraska Book Award for Nonfiction in 2003 and Third Place in the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award in Nonfiction for 2002. The book was also chosen as the Best Book Written by a Midwestern Writer for 2002 by Friends of American Writers, and it won the Gold Award for Autobiography in ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Awards. His most recent book is Delights & Shadows (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He is former vice-president of Lincoln Benefit Life, an insurance company, and lives on an acreage near the village of Garland, NE. He teaches as a Visiting Professor in the English department of the University of Nebraska — Lincoln.