Stephanie Burt

Read poems by this poet

Stephanie Burt was born in 1971 and raised in Washington, D.C. She received a BA from Harvard University in 1994 and a PhD in English from Yale University in 2000.

Burt, who has published under the name Stephen, is the author of the poetry collections Advice from the Lights (Graywolf Press, 2017); Belmont (Graywolf Press, 2013); and Parallel Play (Graywolf Press, 2006). About her debut book Donald Revell writes,

[Stephanie] Burt has found a courage I’d never imagined until I read these poems. It is the courage to expound the consolations of terror, to declare that we are the ancients of ourselves, already more accustomed than we know to life in the ruins. With Parallel Play, Burt becomes the [Constantine P.] Cavafy of these former United States. It will be a privilege to await the barbarians in his good company.

Also a literary critic, Burt is the author of The Poem Is You (Harvard Unviersity Press, 2016); The Art of the Sonnet (Harvard University Press, 2010); Close Calls with Nonsense (Graywolf Press, 2009), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Popular Music (Center for Literary Publishing, 1999), among others.

Burt is currently a professor of English at Harvard University. She lives in the suburbs of Boston.