Rigoberto González is the author of eighteen books of poetry and prose. He has received fellowships from The Lannan Foundation, The Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and United States Artists. His other honors include the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, the American Book Award, the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America. He’s a distinguished professor of English and the director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Rutgers-Newark.