Some of Jacqueline Osherow’s best known poems address her post-Holocaust consciousness. “For my generation,” she says, “those born in the aftermath of the war—the horror…defined the world to us. It is as a testament to this predicament that I wish these poems to stand.” Her work also explores Jewish tradition and the inconsistencies and mysteries in Biblical texts, often in difficult verse forms (sestinas, sonnets, terza rima), often with humor and an intimate tone.

Osherow is the author of five books of poems, Looking for Angels in New York(1988) and Conversations with Survivors (1993) from University of Georgia Press, With a Moon in Transit (1996) and Dead Men’s Praise (1999) from Grove Press, and The Hoopoe’s Crown (2005) from BOA Editions. Her work has appeared in The Norton Anthology of Jewish-American Poetry, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, Best American Poetry (1995,1998), and The Extraordinary Tide: New Poems by American Women. She has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation and the Witter Bynner Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters as well as a number of prizes from the Poetry Society of America. She is Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Utah.