Photo: Sara Barrett

Born in Brooklyn, NY in 1937, Alicia Suskin Ostriker received a bachelor's degree from Brandeis University and an MA and PhD in literature from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Her collections of poetry include The Book of Seventy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009); The Volcano Sequence (2002); The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998) which was a finalist for the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; The Crack in Everything (1996), which was a National Book Award finalist and won both the Paterson Poetry Award and the San Francisco State Poetry Center Award; and The Imaginary Lover (1986), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America.

Her numerous books of critical writing include Dancing at the Devil's Party: Essays on Poetry, Politics and the Erotic (2000), The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions (1994) and Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women's Poetry in America (1986).

Currently she teaches poetry in New England College's Low-Residency MFA Program.