Mark Irwin is the author of eleven collections of poetry—including Joyful Orphan (University of Nevada Press, forthcoming 2023) and American Urn: Selected Poems (1987–2014) (Ashland Poetry Press, 2015)—and the essay collection Monster: Distortion, Abstraction, and Originality in Contemporary American Poetry (Peter Lang, 2017). His poetry and essays have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, AGNI, Harper’s, The Nation, and elsewhere. He has received, among other honors, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fulbright, Lilly, and Wurlitzer Foundations. He is professor of creative writing at University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles and the mountains of rural Colorado. Read a 2013 interview with Mark Irwin. (updated 10/2022)