Jonathan Galassi

Jonathan Galassi was born in 1949 in Seattle. He attended Harvard College, where he studied with Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. He graduated in 1971 and went on to be a Marshall Scholar at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge.

Galassi’s books of poetry include Left-Handed: Poems (Knopf, 2012); North Street: Poems (HarperCollins Publishers, 2000); and Morning Run: Poems (Paris Review Editions, 1988). He is also an acclaimed translator of the Italian poets Giacomo Leopardi and Eugenio Montale, and has published several volumes of their works. His first novel, Muse, was published by Knopf in 2015.

Charles McGrath wrote in a New York Times article about Galassi’s book Left-Handed, “Mr. Galassi’s poems are direct and plain-spoken, sometimes modest to a fault. His two previous volumes are noteworthy for their technical mastery and absence of pretension.”

Galassi’s honors include a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. He served as the poetry editor for The Paris Review for a decade. He is also Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Directors of the Academy of American Poets. He is currently the president and publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux and lives in Brooklyn, New York.