Mary Oliver was born in Maple Heights, Ohio in 1935. Her first collection American Primitive (1983) won a Pulitzer Prize. It was followed by books including Dream Work (1986), House of Light (1990), New and Selected Poems (1992), White Pine (1994), West Wind (1997), Winter Hours (1999), The Leaf and the Cloud (2000), What Do We Know (2002), Owls and Other Fantasies (2003), Why I Wake Early (2004), Blue Iris (2004), New and Selected Poems: volume two (2005), and a CD recording, At Blackwater Pond: Mary Oliver reads Mary Oliver (2005). Bloodaxe published her first UK selection, Wild Geese: Selected Poems, in 2004, followed by her later collections, Thirst (2007), Red Bird (2008), Evidence (2009) and Swan (2011). Mary Oliver is America's biggest selling contemporary poet. She holds the Catherine Osgood Foster Chair at Bennington College, Vermont, and divides her time between Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Florida.