MICHAEL SCHMIDT was born in 1947 in Mexico. He studied at Harvard and read English at Oxford. He has taught at the University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University, and the University of Glasgow, and was writer in residence at St John’s College, Cambridge (2012-2015). He is the editor of PN Review, a leading British literary journal, which he founded in 1972, and is founder and editorial director of Carcanet Press, which has published poetry since 1969.
Michael has edited several anthologies, notably The Harvill Book of Twentieth-Century Poetry in English and the Carcanet introductory New Poetries series. He has published several collections of poetry, two novels, and substantial literary histories including The Novel: A Biography and The Lives of the Poets. He has also translated Aztec poetry and poems and essays by the Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz.