Maxine Chernoff

Maxine Chernoff was born on February 24, 1952, in Chicago and received her undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Chernoff is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, including Here (Counterpath, 2014); Without (Shearsman, 2012); and To Be Read in the Dark (Omnidawn, 2011).

A fiction author and translator as well as a poet, Chernoff is also the author of six books of fiction and, with Paul Hoover, is the co-translator of The Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin (Omnidawn, 2008), which won the 2009 PEN USA Translation Award. Also with Hoover, Chernoff founded and edited New American Writing.

A recipient of the Carl Sandburg Award in Poetry, as well as fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, the Marin Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Chernoff currently serves as a professor and chair of the creative writing program at San Francisco State University. She lives in California.