Stephen Dunn

Stephen Elliot Dunn (June 24, 1939 – June 24, 2021) was an American poet and educator who authored twenty-one collections of poetry. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 2000 collection, Different Hours, and received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He also won three National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, Guggenheim Fellowship, and Rockefeller Foundations Fellowship.

Early life Dunn was born in Forest Hills, Queens, New York on June 24, 1939. His parents were Ellen (Fleishman) and Charles Dunn. He attended Forest Hills High School, where he played basketball. After graduating in 1957, he studied history at Hofstra University. He played guard for its basketball team and was part of the squad that had a 23–1 record during the 1959–60 season. He was nicknamed "Radar" for his ability to make jump shots.

Dunn graduated from Hofstra University in 1962 and went on to play one season for the Williamsport Billies of the Eastern Basketball Association. He then worked in advertising until he was 26, when he traveled to Spain to pen a novel, which he ended up discarding. He subsequently undertook postgraduate studies at Syracuse University, obtaining a master's degree in creative writing in 1970.

Career Dunn began teaching at Stockton University in 1974 and published his first full-length collection entitled Looking for Holes in the Ceiling that same year.

A collection of essays about Dunn's poetry was published in 2013. He finished his last book, The Not Yet Fallen World, shortly before his death.

Personal life Dunn married his first wife, Lois Kelly, in 1964. Together, they had two children: Susanne and Andrea. They divorced in 2001. He married Barbara Hurd the following year. He died on the night of his 82nd birthday at his home in Frostburg. He suffered from Parkinson's disease prior to his death.

Selected bibliography Poetry Collections

Full of Lust and Good Usage, Carnegie-Mellon University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1976. A Circus of Needs, Carnegie-Mellon University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1978. Work and Love, Carnegie-Mellon University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1981. Not Dancing, Carnegie-Mellon University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1984. Local Time, Quill/Morrow (New York, NY), 1986. Between Angels: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 1989. Landscape at the End of the Century: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 1991. New and Selected Poems: 1974-1994, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 1994. Loosestrife: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 1996. Riffs & Reciprocities: Prose Pairs, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 1998. Different Hours, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2000. The Insistence of Beauty: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2004. Local Visitations: Poems, Norton, 2004, Everything Else in the World, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2006. What Goes On: Selected and New Poems 1995-2009, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 2009. Here and Now: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2011. Lines of Defense, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2014. Whereas: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2017. Pagan Virtues: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2019. ISBN 978-1324002314 The Not Yet Fallen World: New and Selected Poems. W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2022. ISBN 978-0-393-88225-4.

Selected list of poems

Non fiction Walking Light: Memoirs and Essays on Poetry, BOA Editions, Ltd., 2001.

Degrees of Fidelity: Essays on Poetry and the Latitudes of the Personal, Tiger Bark Press, 2018.