Henry Taylor is Professor of Literature and Co-Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at American University in Washington, DC, where he has taught since 1971. His third collection of poems, The Flying Change, received the 1986 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; his first two, The Horse Show at Midnight (1966) and An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards (1975), were reissued in one volume in 1992. He has translated from Bulgarian, French, Hebrew, Italian, and Russian, as well as two collections by the Bulgarian poet Vladimir Levchev, the most recent being Black Book of the Endangered Species (1999). His translation of Sophocles' Electra appeared (spring 1998) in the Sophocles, 1 volume of the Penn Greek Drama series. He is now at work on a new collection called Crooked Run, titled after a creek in his native Loudoun County, Virginia.

Taylor has received Fellowships in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts (1978 and 1986), a Research Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1980-81), the Witter Bynner Prize of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1984), and the Golden Crane Award of the Washington Chapter of the American Literary Translators Association (1989). In 2001 he was inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers.  

Brother Dave Gardner was a southern comedian of the 1950's and 1960's. 

Photo by Melissa Laitsch