Born in the Bronx in 1932, Linda Pastan draws on experiences of daily life and of nature to create direct poems in a spare and engaging voice. Family experience—ordinary stories of husband and wife, of child and parent—are transformed in her poems to prisms for deep human themes, loss, growth, and the fragility of life. Pastan is the recipient of many honors and awards, including a Pushcart Prize and the 2003 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, given for lifetime achievement. For many years, she has been associated with the Breadloaf Writers Conference. An interview with Pastan from The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, may be found here.