Lisel Mueller was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1924. Her books of poetry include Alive Together: New & Selected Poems (Louisiana State University Press, 1996), which won the Pulitzer Prize; Learning to Play by Ear (1990); Waving from Shore (1989); Second Language (1986); The Need to Hold Still (1980), which received the National Book Award; Voices from the Forest (1977); The Private Life, which was the 1975 Lamont Poetry Selection; and Dependencies (1965). She has also published several volumes of translation, most recently Circe's Mountain by Marie Luise Kaschnitz (1990). Her honors include the Carl Sandburg Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She lives in Lake Forest, Illinois.