Edwin Frank Ochester is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and editor

Editing

Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

.

Born September 15 in Brooklyn, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, he was educated at Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

, Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison

University of Wisconsin–Madison

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...

.

Currently he is a core faculty member of the Bennington College

Bennington College

Bennington College is a liberal arts college located in Bennington, Vermont, USA. The college was founded in 1932 as a women's college and became co-educational in 1969.-History:-Early years:...

 MFA Writing Seminars. For nearly twenty years Ochester served as director of the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh

University of Pittsburgh

The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...

, and he was twice elected president of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs

Association of Writers & Writing Programs

The Association of Writers & Writing Programs is a literary organization whose mission is "to foster literary talent and achievement, to advance the art of writing as essential to a good education, and to serve the makers, teachers, students, and readers of contemporary writing."-Members:AWP...

. From 1967 to 1970 he was assistant professor of English at University of Florida, Gainesville.

Since 1979 he has served as general editor of the Pitt Poetry Series

Pitt Poetry Series

The Pitt Poetry Series, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, is one of the largest and best known lists of contemporary American poetry.-History:...

, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press

University of Pittsburgh Press

The University of Pittsburgh Press is a scholarly publishing house and a major American university press, part of the University of Pittsburgh. The university and the press are located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States....

. It is one of the largest and best known lists of contemporary American poetry by any publisher. He is also general editor of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize

Drue Heinz Literature Prize

The Drue Heinz Literature Prize is a major American literary award for short fiction in the English language.This prize of the University of Pittsburgh Press in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA was initiated in 1981 by Mrs. Drue Heinz and developed by Frederick A. Hetzel...

 for short fiction.

Poets published by Ochester in the Pitt Series include Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds

-Life:Sharon Olds was born in 1942 in San Francisco. She was raised as a “hellfire Calvinist”, as she describes it. She says she was by nature "a pagan and a pantheist" and notes "I was in a church where there was both great literary art and bad literary art, the great art being psalms and the bad...

, Billy Collins

Billy Collins

Billy Collins is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute, Florida...

, Ted Kooser

Ted Kooser

Ted Kooser is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006.-Early Life:...

, Lawrence Joseph

Lawrence Joseph

Lawrence Joseph is an American poet, writer, essayist, critic, lawyer, and professor of law.-Life:Joseph's grandparents, Lebanese Maronite and Syrian Melkite Eastern Catholics, were among the first Arab Americans to emigrate to Detroit, where both Joseph's parents were born...

, Richard Shelton

Richard Shelton

Richard Shelton is an English actor and singer, best known to millions for playing the role of Dr Adam Forsythe on British television's daytime Soap Opera Emmerdale on ITV1...

, Larry Levis

Larry Levis

Larry Patrick Levis was an American poet.-Youth and Education:Larry Levis was born the son of a grape grower; he grew up driving a tractor, picking grapes, and pruning vines of Selma, California, a small fruit-growing town in the San Joaquin Valley...

, Denise Duhamel

Denise Duhamel

-Background:Duhamel received her B.F.A. from Emerson College and her M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts recipient and has been resident poet at Bucknell University...

, Lynn Emanuel

Lynn Emanuel

Lynn Collins Emanuel is an American poet. Some of her poetry collections include Then, Suddenly— and Noose and Hook ....

, Bob Hicok

Bob Hicok

-Life:Hicok is an associate professor of creative writing at Virginia Tech. He is from Michigan and before teaching owned and ran a successful automotive die design business...

, Jim Daniels

Jim Daniels

James Raymond Daniels is an American poet and writer.Since 1981, Daniels has been on the faculty of the creative writing program at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he is the Thomas Stockham Baker Professor of English.He won the inaugural Brittingham Prize in Poetry in...

, Gary Soto

Gary Soto

Gary Soto is a Mexican-American author and poet.Mexican-American parents Manuel and Angie Soto . In his youth, he worked in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley and in factories in Fresno. Gary's father died in 1957, when he was just five years old...

, Stuart Dybek

Stuart Dybek

-Personal life:Dybek was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Chicago's Little Village and Pilsen neighborhoods in the 1950s and early 1960s. Dybek graduated from St. Rita of Cascia High School in 1959...

, Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Thompson Norris was an American novelist and wife of fellow writer Charles Norris, whom she wed in 1909...

, Alicia Ostriker

Alicia Ostriker

Alicia Suskin Ostriker is an American poet and scholar who writes Jewish feminist poetry.Alicia is married to the noted astronomer Jeremiah Ostriker who taught at Princeton University...

, Toi Derricotte

Toi Derricotte

Toi Derricotte is an American poet and a professor of writing at University of Pittsburgh.At Wayne State University she earned a B.A. in 1965 and an M.A...

, Dean Young

Dean Young (poet)

Dean Young is a contemporary American poet in the poetic lineage of John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and Kenneth Koch. Often cited as a second-generation New York School poet, Young also derives influence and inspiration from the work of André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the other French Surrealist poets,...

, and David Wojahn

David Wojahn

David Wojahn is a contemporary American poet who teaches poetry in the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, and in the low residency MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts...

.

His book Dancing on the Edges of Knives won the 1973 Devins Award for Poetry

Devins Award for Poetry

The Devins Award for Poetry is an American literary award for a book of poetry in the English language.This prize of the University of Missouri Press in Columbia, Missouri, USA was made possible with funding by Dr. and Mrs. A...

, and he has won fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

 and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts

Pennsylvania Council on the Arts

The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts is an agency serving the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.Established in 1966, its mission is "to foster the excellence, diversity and vitality of the arts in Pennsylvania and to broaden the availability and appreciation of those arts throughout the state." Each year...

.

Ochester is a founding editor of the poetry magazine 5 AM.

Since 1972 he and his wife Britt Horner have lived on a small farm in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania

Armstrong County, Pennsylvania

Armstrong County is a county located in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 census, the population was 68,941. It is located northeast of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. Armstrong County was added to the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area in 2003.The county seat is Kittanning...

. They have two grown children and one grandchild.

Works

• We Like It Here, poetry (Madison: Quixote Press, 1967)
• The Great Bourgeois Bus Company, poetry (Madison: Quixote Press, 1969)
• The Third Express, poetry (Madison: Quixote Press, 1973)
• Natives: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, (editor), a poetry anthology (Madison: Quixote Press, 1973)
• Dancing on the Edges of Knives, poetry (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973)
• The End of the Ice Age, poetry (Pittsburgh: Slow Loris Press, 1977)
• A Drift of Swine, poetry (Birmingham: Thunder City Press, 1979)
• Miracle Mile, poetry (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1984)
• Weehawken Ferry, poetry (Bangor: Juniper Press, 1985)
• Changing the Name to Ochester, poetry (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1988)
• The Pittsburgh Book of Contemporary American Poetry, (co-editor with Peter Oresick
  Peter Oresick
  Peter Oresick is an American poet and Associate Professor of English at Chatham University, where he directs the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program...
  
  ), a poetry anthology, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993)
• Allegheny, poetry (Easthampton: Adastra Press, 1995)
• Cooking in Key West, poetry (Easthampton: Adastra Press, 2000)
• Snow White Horses: Selected Poems 1973-1988, poetry (Pittsburgh: Autumn House Press
  Autumn House Press
  Autumn House Press is an independent, non-profit literary publishing company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.In a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette poetry feature, Bob Hoover writes that "Simms says he started the operation after he noticed that the 'large traditional commercial presses, had...
  
  , 2000)
• The Land of Cockaigne, poetry (Ashland: Story Line Press, 2001)
• American Poetry Now: Pitt Poetry Series Anthology, a poetry anthology, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007)
• The Republic of Lies, poetry (Easthampton: Adastra Press, 2007)
• Unreconstructed: Poems Selected and New, poetry (Pittsburgh: Autumn House Press
  Autumn House Press
  Autumn House Press is an independent, non-profit literary publishing company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.In a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette poetry feature, Bob Hoover writes that "Simms says he started the operation after he noticed that the 'large traditional commercial presses, had...
  
  , 2007)

Sources

Contemporary Authors Online. The Gale Group, 2002. PEN (Permanent Entry Number): 0000074046.