Glyn Maxwell was born in 1962 in Welwyn Garden City, England. He moved to the USA in 1996, teaching first at Amherst College, Massachusetts, then at Columbia University and The New School in New York City. In 1997 he was awarded the E. M. Forster Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was appointed Poetry Editor at the New Republic in 2001, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.His first book of poetry, Tale of the Mayor's Son, was published in 1990. Out of the Rain (1992) won a Somerset Maugham Award, and Rest for the Wicked (1995) was shortlisted for both the Whitbread Poetry Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. The Breakage (1998), was shortlisted for both the T.S. Eliot and the Forward Poetry (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) Prizes.