Biography
Coleman Barks was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He attended school at the University of North Carolina and the University of California at Berkeley. He taught poetry and creative writing at the University of Georgia for over thirty years until 1976, when after meeting Robert Bly, he began translating the 13th century mystic Rumi. His first publication of the Rumi work, Open Secret: Versions of Rumi, was awarded the Pushcart Writer's Choice Award by William Stafford. His later work with Rumi was collected in a definitive best-selling anthology, The Essential Rumi, and re-issued in 1997. He has also won the New England/Breadloaf Quarterly Narrative Poem Prize and the Southern Poetry Review's Guy Owen Award. Barks is the father of two grown children and grandfather of three. He is now retired and living in Athens, Georgia.
Bibliography
Poetry
Translations
Sources and Links