Born in New York in 1942, Marilyn Hacker is the author of nine books, most recently Squares and Courtyards (2000). Other works include Selected Poems 1965-1990 (1994), which was awarded the Poet's Prize and Winter Numbers (1994), which won both the Lambda Literary Award and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. In 1991, she also received the Lambda Literary Award for Going Back to the River (1990) and in 1975, she received the National Book Award for Presentation Piece (1974), which was also a Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. Her recent translations include Claire Malroux's Soleil de Jadis' A Long-Gone Sun in 2000, and Vénus Khoury-Ghata's Here There Was Once A Country in 2001.

Hacker served as editor of The Kenyon Review from 1990 until 1994. Her awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Bernard F. Conners Prize from the Paris Review, and the John Masefield Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America.

Hacker, who lives in New York City and Paris, currently teaches English literature and creative writing in the master's program at the City College of New York.