Donald Justice

On August 12, 1925, Donald Justice was born in Miami, Florida.

A graduate of the University of Miami, he attended the universities of North Carolina, Stanford, and Iowa. His books include New and Selected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1995); A Donald Justice Reader (1991); The Sunset Maker (1987), a collection of poems, stories and a memoir; Selected Poems (1979), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize; Departures (1973); Night Light (1967); and The Summer Anniversaries (1959), which received the Academy's Lamont Poetry Selection.

Justice won the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1991, and received grants in poetry from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. From 1997 to 2003, he served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. During his life, he held teaching positions at Syracuse University, the University of California at Irvine, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Iowa. From 1982 until his retirement in 1992, he taught at the University of Florida, Gainesville.

After retiring, he lived in Iowa City with his wife, Jean Ross, until his death on August 6, 2004.