Gregory Orr was born in Albany, New York, in 1947, and grew up in the rural Hudson Valley. He received a BA degree from Antioch College in 1969 and an MFA from Columbia University in 1972. Orr is the author of more than ten collections of poetry, including
River Inside the River: Poems (W. W. Norton, 2013);
How Beautiful the Beloved (Copper Canyon Press, 2009);
Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved (Copper Canyon Press, 2005); and
The Caged Owl: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2002). Orr is a professor of English at the University of Virginia, where he founded the MFA program in writing in 1975. From 1978 to 2003, he was poetry editor of the
Virginia Quarterly Review. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. (
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