Edward Hirsch was born in Chicago on January 20, 1950, and educated both at Grinnell College and the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a PhD in folklore.
His first collection of poems, For the Sleepwalkers (Alfred A. Knopf), was published in 1981 and went on to receive the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University. His second collection, Wild Gratitude (Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), received the National Book Critics Circle Award.