Daniel Halpern

1945 –
Read poems by this poet

Born in Syracuse, New York, on September 11, 1945, Daniel Halpern is publisher and president of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

He is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently Something Shining (Alfred K. Knopf, 1999). His other books of poetry include: Traveling on Credit (1972), Street Fire (1975), Seasonal Rights (1982), Life Among Others (1978), Tango (1987), and Foreign Neon (Knopf 1991).

For twenty-five years Halpern edited the international literary magazine Antaeus, which he founded in Tangier, Morocco with Paul Bowles. Halpern has also edited many anthologies including The Art of the Tale (1987); The Art of the Story (2000); and Reading the Fights (1990), which he co-edited with Joyce Carol Oates.

Of his work, the poet Derek Walcott writes:

The quality of memory that Halpern strives after in poem after poem and which he repeatedly achieves is that nod of agreement which truth gives to experience, whether of praise or of pain.

He has received numerous grants and awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the 1993 PEN Publisher Citation. In 2009, he received the first Editor’s Award, given by Poets and Writers.

From 1975 to 1995 he taught in the graduate writing program of Columbia University, which he chaired for many years. He has also taught at The New School for Social Research and Princeton University.

He currently lives in New York and Princeton, New Jersey, with his wife, the writer Jeanne Wilmot, and their daughter Lily.