Christopher Merrill Biography

Christopher Merrill is an American poet, essayist, journalist and translator. Currently, he serves as director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He led the initiative that resulted in the selection of Iowa City as a UNESCO City of Literature, a part of the Creative Cities Network. In 2011, he was appointed to the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO.

Life and career

He was educated at Middlebury College and the University of Washington. He has published four collections of poetry, including Watch Fire, for which he received the Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets. He has also published translations, several edited volumes, and four books of nonfiction. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, and his journalism appears in many publications. For ten years he was the book critic for the daily radio news program The World. He has held the William H. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross.

Awards, fellowships, and prizes

Sherman Brown Neff Fellowship, University of Utah (1986–1987)

John Ciardi Fellow in Poetry, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference (1989)

Pushcart Prize XV in Poetry (1990)

Editors’ Award in Poetry, Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry & Prose (1990)

Ingram Merrill Foundation Award in Poetry (1991)

Readers’ Choice Award in Poetry, Prairie Schooner (1992)

The Academy of American Poets Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award (1993)

Translation Award, Slovenian Ministry of Culture (1997)

Finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Prize (for The Four Questions of Melancholy: New and Selected Poems by Tomaž Šalamun (editor)) (1997)

Writers Association of Bosnia-Herzegovina Annual Literary Award, The Bosnian Stecak (2001)

Translation Awards, Korean Literature Translation Institute (2003, 2004, 2006)

Kostas Kyriazis Foundation Honorary International Literary Prize (2005)

Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, French Ministry of Culture and Communications (2006)