Forrest Gander is an American poet, essayist, novelist, critic, and translator. Born in the Mojave Desert, he grew up in Virginia and traveled intensively; he has degrees in geology, a subject referenced frequently in both his poems and essays, and in English literature. His writing has been linked to ecopoetics, ecology, and intersubjectivity. A writer in multiple genres, Gander is noted for his collaborations with photographers Sally Mann and Graciela Iturbide, dancers Eiko & Koma, ceramic artist Ashwini Bhat, and painter Tjibbe Hooghiemstra, among many others. He is a United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow and the recipient of fellowships from the Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The Whiting Foundation, and the Howard Foundation. He is the Adele Kellenberg Seaver Professor of Literary Arts and Comparative Literatures at Brown University in Rhode Island. 

January 21st, 1956 in Mojave Desert (Age 68)