David Biespiel was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1964 and grew up in Houston, Texas. He has degrees from Boston University and the University of Maryland. A former NCAA scholarship diver who competed in the United States National Diving Championships, he continues to coach national, international and Olympic-caliber divers. The recipient of the Academy of American Poets Prize, the Individual Artist Award in Poetry from the Maryland Arts Council and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, Biespiel has taught at several colleges, including Stanford University. He now lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is Director and Writer-in-Residence of The Attic Writers’ Workshop and also teaches at Oregon State University.

Biespiel’s second book of poems, Wild Civility, was published in 2003 by University of Washington Press in a new series edited by Linda Bierds. His first book of poems, Shattering Air, was published by BOA Editions in 1996. He writes a monthly poetry column for The Oregonian and edits the recently revived Poetry Northwest, once revered as the longest-running poetry-only journal in the United States, and now back in print in a new format.