Mark Doty

Mark Doty (born August 10, 1953 in Maryville, Tennessee) is a National Book Award winning American poet and memoirist. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, then received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Goddard College in Vermont. In 1989, his partner Wally Roberts tested positive for HIV, which drastically changed Doty's writing. Roberts's death in 1994 inspired Doty to write Atlantis, and Hea... more

Mark Doty (born August 10, 1953 in Maryville, Tennessee) is a National Book Award winning American poet and memoirist. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, then received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Goddard College in Vermont. In 1989, his partner Wally Roberts tested positive for HIV, which drastically changed Doty's writing. Roberts's death in 1994 inspired Doty to write Atlantis, and Heaven's Coast: A Memoir also deals with this subject. In 1995, he won the ₤10,000 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, the first American poet to have done so. He has written twelve books of poetry and three memoirs. Firebird told the story of his childhood in the American South and in Arizona. Dog Years was a memoir of the lives of two of his dogs who Doty had while dealing with the death of his lover and the devastation of 9-11. Louise Erdrich praised the book as being "about dogs, that is to say, about everything we cannot talk about... the ... less