Wendy Mnookin
J. D. [Sandy] McClatchy is the author of six collections of poems: Scenes From Another Life (Braziller, 1981), Stars Principal (Macmillan, 1986), The Rest of the Way (Knopf, 1990), Ten Commandments (Knopf, 1998), Hazmat (Knopf, 2002, a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award), and Mercury Dressing (Knopf , 2009). His selected poems, entitled Division of Spoils (Arc), appeared in England in 2003. His literary essays are collected in White Paper (Columbia, 1989), which was given the Melville Cane Award by the Poetry Society of America, in Twenty Questions (Columbia, 1998), and in American Writers at Home (Vendome/Library of America, 2004). He has also edited many other books, including The Whole Difference: Selected Writings of Hugo von Hofmannsthal (Princeton, 2008), The Four Seasons (Knopf, 2008), James Merrill’s Selected Poems (Knopf, 2008). He now teaches at Yale, where he is a Professor of English, and since 1991 has served as editor of The Yale Review. In addition, he has a prominent role in the opera house as a librettist; he has written thirteen libretti. He has served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 1998 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the following year was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He currently serves as the Academy’s President. In 2000 he was awarded the Governor’s Arts Medal by the State of Connecticut. Other Honors include the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets, and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Stonington, Connecticut.