Cole Swensen is the author of fourteen books of poetry and a book of critical essays, Noise That Stays Noise. Her creative work has been a finalist for the National Book Award and twice for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and she has won the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award, Sun & Moon's New American Writing Award, and has had a book selected in the National Poetry Series. The co-editor with David St. John of the 2009 Norton anthology American Hybrid, she also runs a small press, La Presse Poetry, dedicated to contemporary French work translated by English-language poets. A translator herself, she has won the PEN/USA Award in Literary Translation and has published numerous translations of poetry, literary prose, and art criticism. She has taught at the University of Denver and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and teaches now in the Literary Arts Department at Brown University.