Floyd Skloot

Poet, novelist, memoirist, and science writer Floyd Skloot was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised there and in Long Beach, New York. He earned a BA from Franklin & Marshall College and an MA from Southern Illinois University. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. His collections of poetry include Approximately Paradise (2005), The End of Dreams (2006), Selected Poems: 1970–2005 (2008), The Snow’s Music (2008), Close Reading (2014), Approaching Winter (2015), and Far West (2019). Skloot’s poetry has earned comparisons to that of Richard Wilbur and Stanley Plumly. Of Skloot’s work, David Biespiel remarked, “He finds richness in wonder, in exploration, in a subtle kind of public/private negotiation of the senses.”
 
Skloot’s many other books include the memoirs In the Shadow of Memory (2004), The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer’s Life (2008), and Revertigo: An Off-Kilter Memoir (2014). He is also author of the novels Summer Blue (1994), Patient 002 (2007), and The Phantom of Thomas Hardy (2016). With his daughter, the writer Rebecca Skloot, he coedited The Best American Science Writing 2011.
 
Skloot’s essays and book reviews have appeared widely. His many honors and awards include three Pushcart Prizes, a Pen USA Literary Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, two Pacific Northwest Book Awards, and two Oregon Book Awards. He has taught at the Mid-Atlantic Creative Nonfiction Summer Writers Conference and the Paris Writers Workshop. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, the artist Beverly Hallberg.