Born in the Bronx in 1932, Linda Pastan draws on experiences of daily life and of nature to create direct poems in a spare and engaging voice. Family experience--ordinary stories of husband and wife, of child and parent--are transformed in her poems to prisms for deep human themes, loss, growth, and the fragility of life. Pastan is the recipient of many honors and awards, including a Pushcart Prize and the 2003 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, given for lifetime achievement. For many years, she has been associated with the Breadloaf Writers Conference.