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Over the course of his distinguished career, Shapiro's poetry has explored the shifting landscape of contemporary life: love and loss, family and friendship, Michael Jordan and the Iraq War. His latest collection, Old War, is a vivid, beautiful, and often darkly comic examination of the presence of love and death and joy and heartbreak, with guest appearances by skateboarders, country-western singers, and a stand-up comic in heaven.

Alan Shapiro is the author of ten books of poetry and the recipient of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. A member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, he is a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.