Poet Charles Wright was born on August 25, 1935 in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee. He earned a B. A. at Davidson College and then entered the army. Upon his exit from the service, Wright earned a M. A. at the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop. Wright is currently a Souder Family Professor of English at the University of Virginia. Wright won the Pulitzer Prize and The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his work Black Zodiac. Wright has also received the National Book Award for Country Music: Selected Early Poems, and the PEN Translation Prize for The Storm and Other Poems. In addition to the above awards, Wright has also received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit Medal and… the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.