Born in New Orleans and raised in Hawaii, Barbara Hamby earned an MA from Florida State University in 1981 and was named a Distinguished University Scholar there in 2010. Her first collection, Delirium (University of North Texas Press, 1995), won the Vassar Miller Prize, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. Babel (2004) won the Donald Hall Prize in Poetry. Her linked story collection Lester Higata's 20th Century received the 2010 Iowa Short Fiction Award. She has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
