Jan Schreiber

Jan Schreiber was born in 1941 and grew up in Fish Creek, Wisconsin. He received his BA at Stanford University, his MA at the University of Toronto, and his PhD in English literature at Brandeis University, where he studied with J. V. Cunningham.

Schreiber is the author of five books of poetry: Bay Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2019); Peccadilloes (White Violet Press, 2013); Bell Buoys (Aliquando Press, 1998); Wily Apparitions (Cummington Press, 1992); and Digressions (Aliquando Press, 1970). He is also the author of two books on poetry criticism: Breath Lines: How Poems Work and Why They Matter (LSU Press, 2025) and Sparring with the Sun: Poets and the Ways We Think About Poetry in the Late Days of Modernism (Antilever Press, 2014). 

In the 1970s, Schreiber cofounded the literary magazine Canto: Review of the Arts, which ran for six years. In March 2015, he was named the second poet laureate of Brookline, Massachusetts, taking over for Judith Steinbergh and serving a two-year term. An advisory editor of Think journal, he teaches in the Brandeis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Brandeis University and runs The Critical Path, an annual symposium on poetry criticism.