Phillip Lopate was born in 1943 Brooklyn, New York in and received a B.A. from Columbia in 1964 and later a doctorate from the Union Graduate School in 1979. He spent twelve years working with children as a writer in schools, and taught creative writing and literature at Fordham, Cooper Union, University of Houston, and New York University. Currently, Lopate holds the Adams Chair at Hofstra University and he is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his many awards he has received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and two New York Foundation for the Arts grants. His work includes: These Eyes Don't Always Want to Stay Open (1972), Being With Children (1975), The Daily Round (1976), Confessions of Summer (1979), Bachelorhood: Tales of the Metropolis (1981), The Art of the Personal Essay (1995), Totally, Tenderly, Tragically (1998), Writing New York: A Literary Anthology (2000), Getting Personal (2003), Rudy Burckhardt: Life and Work (2004), Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan (2004), and American Movie Critics: An Anthology From the Silents Until Now (2006).