Philip Levine is the author of sixteen books of poetry, most recently Breath. His other collections include The Simple Truth, which won the Pulitzer Prize and What Work Is, which won the National Book Award. For two years he has served as chair of the Literature Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts, and he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2000. He divides his time between Fresno, California and Brooklyn, New York.