William Baer

William Baer is an award-winning American writer, editor, translator, and educator. The author of sixteen books, he's a former Fulbright (Portugal) and a Guggenheim fellow, as well as the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing grant.

Life
Baer was born in Geneva, New York, in 1948. He was raised in the Bronx and Wayne, New Jersey, and he's a graduate of Rutgers (B.A. English) and New York University (M.A. English). He completed his doctoral dissertation in English at the University of South Carolina under the direction of James Dickey and then attended the Johns Hopkins' Writing Seminars (M.A. Creative Writing) where he studied with John Barth and David St. John. He later attended the University of Southern California's Graduate School of Cinema (M.A. Cinema) where he received the Jack Nicholson Screenwriting Award. He currently holds the Melvin M. Peterson Chair in English and American Literature at the University of Evansville in southern Indiana. A Roman Catholic, Baer lives with his wife and two children in Evansville, Indiana.

Literary Activities
Baer is the author of five books of poetry, including The Unfortunates, recipient of the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize, and "Borges" and Other Sonnets, recipient of the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize. His other books include translations from the Portuguese, Luís de Camões: Selected Sonnets; the textbook, Writing Metrical Poetry; and four collections of interviews, including Classic American Films: Conversations with the Screenwriters.

In 1989, William Baer was the Founding Editor of The Formalist (1990–2004), a small poetry journal which played a significant role in the Formalist poetry revival (New Formalism) and published the work of seven Nobelists and fifteen Pulitzer recipients. He’s also the former poetry editor and film critic for Crisis Magazine. Currently, he serves as the founding director of the St. Robert Southwell Institute, the director of the University of Evansville Press, the contributing editor at Measure, the faculty director of The Evansville Review, and the director of the Richard Wilbur Poetry Series, the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize.

As a playwright, Baer's full-length plays (The Amistad Case, Guiteau, and Lighthouse, recipient of the James H. Wilson Playwriting Award) as well as his shorter plays have been produced at numerous American theaters, including the Dayton Playhouse in Dayton, Ohio; Acrosstown Repertory Theatre in Gainesville, Florida; the Florence Little Theatre in Florence, South Carolina; Playwrights' Circle in Palm Springs, California; the Fells Point Theater in Baltimore, Maryland; the Edward Albee Last Frontier Theater Conference in Valdez, Alaska; the Metropolitan Playhouse of New York in New York City; the Camino Real Playhouse in San Juan Capistrano, California (awarded "Best Play in the Festival"); Emerging Artists Theatre in New York City; the Chicago Dramatists Theatre in Chicago; Masker's Theater, Belfast, Maine; and the St. Tammany One-Act Play Festival in Covington, LA.

Recognition

 * Guggenheim Fellowship (Translation), 2007–2008
 * X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, 2007
 * Melvin M. Peterson Chair in English and American Literature, 2006-
 * James H. Wilson Playwriting Award, 1999
 * T.S. Eliot Prize in Poetry, 1997
 * N.E.A. Creative Writing Fellowship in Fiction, 1995
 * Jack Nicholson Screenwriting Award, Division of Cinema, U.S.C. 1986
 * Fulbright Lectureship in American Literature, Portugal, 1981–1982

Publications

 * "Bocage" and Other Sonnets, Texas Review Press, 2008
 * American Film Classics: Conversations with the Screenwriters, Praeger, 2007
 * Rhyming Poems: A Contemporary Anthology, University of Evansville Press, 2007
 * The Ballad Rode into Town, Turning Point, 2007
 * Writing Metrical Poetry, Writer's Digest Books, 2006
 * The Conservative Poets, University of Evansville Press, 2006
 * Luís de Camões: Selected Sonnets, University of Chicago Press, 2005
 * Sonnets: 150 Sonnets, University of Evansville Press, 2005
 * Fourteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, University Press of Mississippi, 2004
 * "Borges" and Other Sonnets, Truman State University Press, 2003
 * Elia Kazan: Interviews, University Press of Mississippi, 2000
 * The Amistad Case, Eldridge Publishing, 1998
 * The Unfortunates, Truman State University Press, 1997
 * Conversations with Derek Walcott, University Press of Mississippi, 1996