Mark Strand was born in 1934 in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, on the Atlantic coast of Canada. He was educated and raised in the United States and several South American countries. He has published ten books of poetry: Sleeping with One Eye Open (1964) Reasons for Moving (1968) Darker (1970), The Story of Our Lives (1973), The Late Hour (1978), Selected Poems (1980) The Continuous Life (1990), Dark Harbor (1993), Blizzard of One (1998) and a curious book of variations on a word called Chicken, Shadow, Moon & More (2000).
Prose has published The Weather of Words (2000), Mr. And Mrs. Baby (1985) and The Monument (1978) as well as anthologies, translations, art books and children's stories.
In 1990 the United States Congress named Poet Laureate.
In 1999 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his book Blizzard of One.