David Lehman was born in New York City in 1948. He attended Cambridge University as a Kellett Fellow and went on to receive his doctorate ate in English at Columbia University, where he was Lionel Trilling's research assistant. He is the author of three books of poems, including Valentine Place (Scribner, 1996) and Operation Memory (Princeton, 1990). His prose books include Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man and The Big Question. He is the general editor of the University of Michigan Press's Poets on Poetry Series and is on the core faculty of the graduate writing programs at Bennington College and the New School for Social Research. He also teaches at Columbia. He divides his time between Ithaca, New York, and New York City.
