Sharon Olds, born in San Francisco, studied at Stanford University and Columbia University. She is the author of thirteen poetry books, including Balladz (2022), a National Book Award finalist, Arias (2019), short-listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize, Odes (2016), and Stag’s Leap (2012), which won the Pulitzer Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. Her debut, Satan Says (1980), won the San Francisco Poetry Center Award, and her second book, The Dead and the Living (1983), earned the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other notable works include The Father (1992) and The Unswept Room (2002). Olds teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University and co-founded a workshop for hospital residents and veterans. She resides in New York City.

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