Christopher Merrill was born in western Massachusetts and raised in New Jersey. He did his undergraduate work at Middlebury College and his graduate degree at the University of Washington. He has published four collections of poetry, including Watch Fire, for which he received the Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets. He has also published translations, several edited volumes, and four books of nonfiction. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, and his journalism appears in many publications. For ten years he was the book critic for the daily radio news program The World. He has held the William H. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross. Merrill lives in Iowa City with his wife Lisa, a violinist, and their two daughters.