Mark Irwin was born in Faribault, Minnesota in 1953, and has lived throughout the United States and abroad in France and Italy. He has taught at several universities and is the author of two previous poetry collections: The Halo of Desire and Against the Meanwhile (3 Elegies), and he has also translated two volumes of poetry. His awards include The Nation/Discovery Award, a Pushcart Prize, National Endowment for the Arts and Ohio Arts Council Fellowships, and a Fulbright Fellowship to Romania. He lives with his family in Denver, Colorado.

About Bright Hunger:

"In Mark Irwin's beautiful and rigorously attentive new poem, the Eye is truly the agent of Vision."
—Donald Revell

"Mark Irwin's poems reveal a meditative elegance and eloquence that is unparalled in contemporary poetry."
—David St. John

"The richness and evanescence of the moment surface in Irwin's lines."
—W. S. Merwin

"This is a book one wants to taste again and again."
—John Ashbery