Mark Strand - Biography

Biography

Strand was born on Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada. His early years were spent in North America, while much of his teenage years were spent in South and Central America. In 1957, he earned his B.A. from Antioch College in Ohio. Strand then studied painting under Josef Albers at Yale University where he earned a B.F.A in 1959. On a Fulbright Scholarship, Strand studied nineteenth-century Italian poetry in Italy during 1960–1961.

He attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa the following year and earned a Master of Arts in 1962. In 1965 he spent a year in Brazil as a Fulbright Lecturer. His academic career has taken him to numerous colleges and universities to teach. A partial list:

Teaching positions

• University of Iowa, Iowa City, instructor in English, 1962–1965
• University of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Fulbright lecturer, 1965–1966
• Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, assistant professor, 1967
• Columbia University, New York City, adjunct associate professor, 1969–1972
• Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, New York City, associate professor, 1970–1972
• Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, Bain-Swiggett Lecturer, 1973
• Brandeis University, Hurst professor of poetry, 1974–1975
• University of Utah, Salt Lake City, professor of English, 1981–1993
• Johns Hopkins University, Elliot Coleman Professor of Poetry, 1994–c. 1998
• University of Chicago, Committee on Social Thought, 1998 – ca. 2005
• Columbia University, New York City, professor of English and Comparative Literature, ca. 2005–

Visiting professor at

• University of Washington, 1968, 1970
• Columbia University, 1980
• Yale University, 1969–1970
• University of Virginia, 1976, 1978
• California State University at Fresno, 1977
• University of California at Irvine, 1979
• Wesleyan University, 1979
• Harvard University, 1980

In 1997, he left Johns Hopkins University to accept the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professorship of Social Thought at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Since 2005–06, Strand has been teaching literature and creative writing at Columbia University, in New York City.

In 1981, Strand was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. He served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress during the 1990–1991 term. Strand has received numerous awards including a MacArthur Fellowship in 1987 and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1999 for Blizzard of One.