Born in Brooklyn, Michael Steven Harper studied at California State University, Los Angeles and the University of Iowa. He published more than a dozen volumes of poetry since the beginning of his career and had several volumes of African-American poetry.

Harper served as the first Poet Laureate of the State of Rhode Island from 1988 to 1993 and has won numerous awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship and an award from the National Endowment For the Arts. He taught at Brown University from 1970 to his retirement in 2013.

–Christie Finn