Robin Behn was born in 1958. She is a prize-winning poet and author of three collections of poetry. Behn is also a distinguished professor of English and creative writing and was honored with the Burnum Distinguished Faculty Award at the University of Alabama, where she began teaching since the 1980s. Behn has stated that she comes from a family of teachers. Her father also taught English and instilled in her a love of language.

Behn received her bachelor's degree from Oberlin College. She then continued her studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia and was granted a master's degree from the University of Iowa. She has been awarded several major grants, including the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim fellowship.

Her first collection of poetry, Paper Bird, was published in 1988 and won the Associated Writing Programs Award in poetry. Her poem "Ten Years after Your Deliberate Drowning," which appears in...