About David Wagoner
David Wagoner was an American poet and writer, born June 5, 1926 in Massillon, Ohio, and died December 18, 2021 in Edmonds, Washington. His poems are primarily focused on the Pacific Northwest region of North America. When his father lost his job during the Great Depression, He moved with his family to Whiting, Indiana. He studied at Pennsylvania State University, then at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he obtained a master's degree in English. He began to write poetry, before teaching, from 1954, at the University of Washington on the advice of his former professor and friend the poet Theodore Roethke.From 1966 to 2002, He edited the poetry magazine Poetry Northwest. He is also a member of various literary organizations related to poetry. During his career, He won several prizes for this work, including the prestigious Pushcart Prize twice. Collected Poems was nominated for the National Book Award in 1977 and he won the Pushcart Prize that same year. He was again nominated for a National Book Award in 1979 for In Broken Country. He won his second Pushcart Prize in 1983. He is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 1991, the English-Speaking Union prize from Poetry magazine, and the Arthur Rense Prize in 2011. He has also received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Alongside his career as a poet, He has written several works of fiction, such as the novel The Man in the Middle.
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