Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet

Christian Wiman (born in Abilene, Texas) is a poet and essayist who served as editor of Poetry magazine from 2003 to 2013. His poetry and prose have engaged Christianity, illness, mortality, and the crisis of faith with lyric rigor and theological depth. His collection Every Riven Thing (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010) and the essay collection My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (2013) established him as one of the most serious voices writing at the intersection of poetry and spirituality. A graduate of Washington and Lee University, he is the Russ Family Professor of the Practice of Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School. He has received Guggenheim and NEA fellowships.