Michael McGriff was born and raised in Coos Bay, Oregon. He has received a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from The Poetry Foundation, and a Michener Fellowship from the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Choke (Traprock Books, 2006) and Dismantling the Hills (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), which won the 2007 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. He is also the translator of Tomas Tranströmer's The Sorrow Gondola. His work has appeared in Slate, Field, Agni, Northwest Review, and Poetry, among other publications. He is currently at work translating the collected poems of Tomas Tranströmer and editing To Build My Shadow a Fire: The Poetry, Translations, and Prose of David Wevill.