Derek Mahon was born in Belfast, North Ireland, in 1941. He was educated at Trinity College in Dublin. His books of poetry include The Hudson Letter (Wake Forest University Press, 1996); Selected Poems (1993); The Yaddo Letter (1992); Selected Poems (1991); Antarctica (1985); A Kensington Notebook (1984); The Hunt by Night (1982); Courtyards in Delft (1981); Poems, 1962-1978 (1979); The Sea in Winter (1979); In Their Element: A Selection of Poems (with Seamus Heaney, 1977); Light Music (1977); The Snow Party (1975); The Man Who Built His City in Snow (1972); Lives (1972); Beyond Howth Head (1970); Ecclesiastes (1970); Night-Crossing (1968); Design for a Grecian Urn (1967); and Twelve Poems (1965). Derek Mahon's published plays include The Bacchae: After Euripides (1991), The School for Wives: a play in two acts after Molière (1986), and High Time, an adaptation of a play by Molière. He has also edited The Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry (1990) and Modern Irish Poetry (1972). He has translated Racine's Phaedra (1996); Selected Poems by Philip Jaccottet (1987), which won the Scott-Manriet Translation Prize; and The Chimeras by Nerval (1982). His honors include the Irish American Foundation Award, a Lannan Foundation Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the Arts Council Bursary, and the Eric Gregory Award.