Moderator - Jay Parini

Jay Parini

JAY PARINI was born in 1948 in the anthracite mining country of northeastern Pennsylvania. He graduated from Lafayette College in 1970, having taken his junior year abroad at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He went back to ST. Andrews after graduation and stayed there until taking his Ph.D. in 1975. While a graduate student in Scotland he published his first book of poems, Singing in Time (1972) and began contributing essays and reviews to various journals, such as Lines Review and Scottish International.

Parini taught at Dartmouth College from 1975 to 1982. During that period, he published Theodore Roethke: An American Romantic (1979), his first novel, The Love Run (1980), and a second book of poems, Anthracite Country (1982). He contributed poems, essays, and reviews to numerous journals, including The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Poetry, The New Republic, and The Nation. Parini co-founded The New England Review in 1976.

In 1982 he moved to Middlebury College, where he is the Axinn Professor of English. His recent books include a textbook, An Invitation to Poetry (1988), a third book of poems, called Town Life (1988), and four further novels: The Patch Boys (1986), The Last Station (1990), Bay of Arrows (1992), and Benjamin's Crossing (1997). John Steinbeck: A Biography appeared in 1995. A book of essays, Some Necessary Angels, and a book of poems, House of Days, appeared in 1998. Robert Frost: A Life, appeared in 2000 and won the Chicago Tribune-Heartland Award for the best work of non-fiction for that year.

Parini has edited many books, including Gore Vidal: Writer Against the Grain (1992), The Columbia History of American Poetry (1995), and The Norton Book of American Autobiography (March, 1999). He is married to Devon Jersild, a writer, has three sons, and lives in Weybridge, Vermont.

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