Diane Middlebrook joined the faculty of the English Department at Stanford in 1966, and has also held positions as Director of Stanford's Center for Research on Women, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education, and Chair of the Program in Feminist Studies. Her professional honors include Yale prizes for poetry and for her doctoral dissertation, and fellowships from the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Study Center at Bellagio, and the Stanford Humanities Center. From 1985-1990 she held the Howard H. & Jessie T. Watkins University Professorship, a chair endowed to promote innovative education at Stanford. Her teaching has received Stanford's highest forms of recognition: the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching, and the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching. Middlebrook is the author of a book of poems titled Gin Considered as a Demon (1983), and several works of criticism, including Walt Whitman and Wallace Stevens (1974); Worlds Into Words: Understanding Modern Poems (1980); and Coming to Light: American Women Poets of the 20th Century (1985), co-edited with Marilyn Yalom. Her Anne Sexton: A Biography (1991) was a finalist for a National Book Award and for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her most recent book, Suits Me (1998), is a biography of the cross-dressing jazz musician Billy Tipton. Diane Middlebrook is now working on a book about the career of the English poet Ted Hughes.

Website: www.dianemiddlebrook.com