Jane Hirshfield, known as one of American poetry’s central spokespersons for the biosphere, is the founder of Poets for Science and the author of nine poetry books, including Ledger, 2020; The Beauty, long-listed for the 2015 National Book Award; and Given Sugar, Given Salt, finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as two now-classic collections of essays and four books collecting the work of world poets from the deep past.

Her honors include the Poetry Center Book Award and California Book Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and The Academy of American Poets. Elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2019 and a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Hirshfield’s longstanding interest in the dialogue between science and the arts has led her to serve as poet in residence for both an experimental forest in Oregon and a neuroscience department at University of California, San Francisco.

A presenter at festivals and universities world-wide and visiting professor at Stanford, U.C. Berkeley, and elsewhere, her work appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Scientific American, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and ten editions of The Best American Poetry and has been translated into seventeen languages.