Ted Kooser was born in Ames, Iowa, in 1939. He is an English teacher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and author of twelve poetry books and three in prose. With Delicias y sombras he won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005. He lives in Garland, Nebraska, and is a regional poet who transcends the borders of the Midwest. Kooser's poetry is a poetry of rungs, a staircase that puts us within reach of the unattainable, a poetry that illuminates us what we do not see and want to see, a poetry that takes us out of the shadows each time we ascend the levels of the poem.