Diane Ackerman was born October 7, 1948, in Waukegan, Illinois, the daughter of Sam (a restaurant owner) and Marcia (Tischler) Fink. She attended Boston University from 1966 to 1967, and then enrolled at Pennsylvania State University, from which she graduated in 1970 with a bachelor of arts degree. She pursued graduate study at Cornell University, graduating in 1973 with a master of fine arts degree. She went on to earn a master of arts degree in 1976, and a Ph.D. in English in 1978. She then held teaching positions at the University of Pittsburgh (1980-1983) and Washington University (1984-1986), and was a staff writer for the New Yorker from 1988 to 1994.

In 1976, Ackerman published The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral, her first solo volume of poetry. It was followed by Wife of Light in 1978, Lady Faustus (1983), and Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems (1991).

In the early 1990s, Ackerman published two nonfiction works about...