Edward Dorn was born in Eastern Illinois in 1929 and grew up in rural poverty during the Great Depression. After two years at the University of Illinois, 'a set of circumstances and warps of destiny' took him to Black Mountain College, where he studied with Charles Olson. For several years he travelled through the far West of America, following the winds of writing and employment. In 1961 he became a teacher at the University of Idaho and saw the publication of his first book of poetry. Invited by Donald Davie in 1965 to join the faculty at the new University of Essex, he spent most of the next five years in England, where he wrote the first book of his epic Gunslinger. In the 1970s he taught at universities from Chicago to California, and again at Essex, before accepting a professorship in 1978 at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he directed the creative writing program, and continued teaching until his death in December 1999. He is the author of over forty books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and translation.

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