George Economou was born in Great Falls, Montana, and was educated at Colgate and Columbia Universities. Named twice as Fellow in Poetry by the National Endowment for the Humanities, he has also held fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies. He retired as Professor Emeritus of English after forty-one years of teaching, the last seventeen of which were at the University of Oklahoma. He lives in Philadelphia and Wellfleet, Massachusetts.