Forest Gander © Nina Subin

Forrest Gander  [ USA ] 

Forrest Gander was born in the Mojave Desert and lives now, with the artist Ashwini Bhat, near San Francisco, California. He is a writer and translator with degrees in geology and literature. His critical essays have been published in »The Nation«, »The New York Times Book Review«, and the »New York Journal of Books«. Gander met the soon-to-be famous poet CD Wright in San Francisco and the two lived together there, in Mexico, in Arkansas, and finally in Rhode Island where Gander taught at Harvard University and then directed the Literary Arts Program at Brown University. Gander, inspired by contemporary poetry he discovered in Mexico, began translating. His award-winning translations include individual books by writers from Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Spain, and Japan.

He published several books of poetry, translation, and essays before the appearance of his first novel, »As a Friend«(2008), the story (now in film-production) of a gifted man, a land surveyor, whose impact on those around him provokes an atmosphere of intense self-examination and eroticism. In 2014, New Directions Publishers released Ganderʼs widely praised second novel »The Trace«, about a couple who, researching the last journey of Civil War writer Ambrose Bierce, find themselves lost in the Chihuahua Desert. Gander’s many books of poems are concerned with the complexities of intimacy and friendship, and with the mutuality between the human and non-human world – a trajectory that has come to be called ecopoetics. Gander’s recent book of poems, »Be With« (2018), was awarded The Pulitzer Prize.

He is well-known for his collaborations with other artists including Ann Hamilton, Sally Mann, Gus Van Sant, and Graciela Iturbide. He has been the recipient of grants from the Library of Congress, the Guggenheim, Howard, Whiting, and United States Artists Foundations.

Bibliography