Mark Strand was born in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada, and was raised and educated in the United States and South America. He is the author of eight earlier books of poems. He is also the author of a book of stories, Mr. and Mrs. Baby, several volumes of translations (Rafael Alberti and Carlos Drummond de Andrade among them), a number of anthologies (most recently The Golden Ecco Anthology) and several monographs on contemporary artists (William Bailey and Edward Hopper). He has received many honors and grants for his poems, including a MacArthur Fellowship, and in 1990 he was chosen as Poet Laureate of the United States.

He teaches in The Committee on Social Thought at The University of Chicago.