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Max Ritvo was born on December 19, 1990 in Los Angeles, California. He received a BA from Yale University in 2013 and an MFA from Columbia University in 2016.
He authored Letters from Max: A Poet, a Teacher, a Friendship with Sarah Ruhl (Milkweed, 2019); The Final Voicemails: Poems with Louise Glück (Milkweed, 2018); Four Reincarnations (Milkweed Editions, 2016); and Aeons (Poetry Society of America, 2015), which was selected by Jean Valentine to receive the 2014 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship.
About his work Lucie Brock-Broido said, "The poems flicker like fireflies let loose from their captivity in a mason jar, fulgurating like Nobodaddy’s business. Somehow, somewhere, Ritvo must have begun as an infant scholar, a prodigy, a young man of the rarest and most prescient gifts."
In 2012, Ritvo served as an intern at the Academy of American Poets. He passed away on August 23, 2016.