Tom Sleigh (USA)

Tom Sleigh was born in 1953 in Mount Pleasant, Texas, and was raised in Utah and California. He studied at the California Institute of the Arts and Evergreen State College. He received a master’s degree from the John Hopkins Writing Seminars in Baltimore. Sleigh has taught at Dartmouth College, New York University, University of Iowa, UC-Berkeley, and John Hopkins University. He has worked as a reporter in Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Kenya, Iraq, and Libya. He is the author of eleven poetry books, two books of essays, and has translated Euripides’ Herakles into English. Sleigh currently lives in Brooklyn and heads the MA creative writing program at Hunter College. His poetry book Army Cats (2011) earned him the John Updike Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, while his book Space Walk (2007) received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Sleigh was awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his poetry collection Far Side of the Earth (2003). His book The Dreamhouse (1999) was included in the final list of the Los Angeles Times book awards, while The Chain (1996) was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Tom Sleigh is also a recipient of the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.