Biography
Mark Doty (born 1953 in Maryville, Tennessee) is an American poet. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, then received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Goddard College in Vermont. In 1989, his partner Wally Roberts tested positive for HIV, which drastically changed his writing. Roberts's death in 1994 inspired Doty to write Atlantis. In 1995, he won the ₤10,000 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, the first American poet to have done so. He lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts and Houston, Texas. He is currently the John and Rebecca Moores Professor in the graduate program at the University of Houston.