Nationality American Name William Baer | Role Writer Literary movement New Formalism | |
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Occupation Writer, Editor, Translator, Professor Alma mater Rutgers University (B.A.)
New York University (M.A.)
University of South Carolina (Ph.D)
Johns Hopkins University (M.A.)
University of Southern California (M.A.) Education Johns Hopkins University Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities, US & Canada Books Writing metrical poetry, Classic American Films, Borges & other sonnets, The unfortunates, Bocage and other sonnets | ||
William Baer (born December 29, 1948) is an American writer, editor, translator, and academic. He has been the Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright (Portugal), and a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Early life and education
William Baer was born in Geneva, New York, in 1948. He was raised in The Bronx, New York City, and Wayne, New Jersey. After graduating from Rutgers University with a B.A. in English, he received an M.A. in English from New York University. He completed his doctoral dissertation in English at the University of South Carolina under the direction of James Dickey, before attending the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars where he earned an M.A. in Creative Writing, working under David St. John and John Barth. He also graduated from USC's School of Cinematic Arts with an M.A. in Cinema, receiving the Jack Nicholson Screenwriting Award.
Literary activities
Baer is the author of five books of poetry, including The Unfortunates, recipient of the T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize; "Borges" and Other Sonnets; and "Bocage" and Other Sonnets, recipient of the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize. His other books include translations from the Portuguese, Luís de Camões: Selected Sonnets; the textbook, Writing Metrical Poetry; and four collections of interviews, including Classic American Films: Conversations with the Screenwriters.
In 1989, William Baer was the Founding Editor of The Formalist (1990–2004), a small poetry journal which played a significant role in the Formalist poetry revival (New Formalism). He is also the former poetry editor and film critic for Crisis Magazine. Currently, he serves as the founding director of the St. Robert Southwell Institute, and previously he served as the director of the University of Evansville Press, the contributing editor at Measure, the faculty director of The Evansville Review, and the founding director of the Richard Wilbur Poetry Series, the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize.
In 1995, William Baer received an N.E.A. Creative Writing Grant in fiction, and his short stories have been widely published in such journals as The Iowa Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Chariton Review, and The Dalhousie Review. In 2015, two collections of his short fiction were published: Times Square and Other Stories and One-and-Twenty Tales.
William Baer's various plays have been produced at more than twenty-five American theaters, including the 13th Street Theatre in New York City, Chicago Dramatists, and the Metropolitan Playhouse of New York. His most recent full-length drama, Three Generations of Imbeciles, received the New Works of Merit Playwriting Award and was chosen for the regionals of the 2013 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.