Charles Simic

Charles Simic was born on May 9, 1938, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where he had a traumatic childhood during World War II. In 1954 he emigrated from Yugoslavia with his mother and brother to join his father in the United States. They lived in and around Chicago until 1958. His first poems were published in 1959, when he was twenty-one. In 1961 he was drafted into the U.S. Army, and in 1966 he earned his Bachelor's degree from New York University while working at night to cover the costs of tuition. Simic was chosen to receive the Academy Fellowship in 1998, and elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2000. He has received numerous awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1995. Most recently, he was announced as the recipient of the 2007 Wallace Stevens Award by the Academy of American Poets. Simic is Emeritus Professor of the University of New Hampshire where he has taught since 1973.