Donald Berger was born in New York City. He has taught at the University of Maryland and Montgomery College and currently teaches writing at Johns Hopkins University. The author of The Long Time, a bilingual edition in English and German (Wallstein Press, 2015), Quality Hill (Lost Roads Publishers, 1993) and The Cream-Filled Muse (Fledermaus Press, 1988), he has also authored two chapbooks, Pizza Necklace (Foundlings Press, 2023) and Or Purchase a Star (Berlin Collaborations, 2009). His poems and prose appear in The New Republic, The New York Times, Slate, Conjunctions, Colorado Review, Fence, Ironwood, The Iowa Review, etc. This book won the James Tate Poetry Prize 2023.