Henry Taylor

Poet and translator Henry Taylor was born in Lincoln, Virginia on June 21, 1942. He earned a BA from the University of Virginia and an MA from Hollins University. Taylor’s many poetry collections include Crooked Run (2006); Understanding Fiction: Poems 1986-1996; The Flying Change (1985), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize; An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards (1975); and The Horse Show at Midnight (1966). He has translated works from Bulgarian, French, Hebrew, Italian, and Russian. His translations include Black Book of the Endangered Species (1999) by the Bulgarian poet Vladimir Levchev and Electra (1988) by Sophocles. Taylor was a professor of literature and codirector of the MFA program in creative writing at American University in Washington, D.C. Taylor won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for his book, The Flying Change: Poems. In 2001 he was inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Taylor died at the age of eighty-two on October 13, 2024.