Christopher Buckley is a novelist, essayist, humorist, critic, magazine editor and memoirist. He earned his BA from St. Mary’s College, MA from San Diego State University, and MFA from the University of California-Irvine. He is the author of over twenty collections of poetry, including most recently Modern History (2008), Rolling the Bones (2010), White Shirt (2011), Back Room as the Philosopher’s Club (2014), and Star Journal: Selected Poems (2016). 

With Gary Young he has edited the anthologies The Geography of Home: California’s Poetry of Place (1999), Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poetry and Poetics from California (2008), and One for the Money: The Sentence as a Poetic Form (2013). With Christopher Howell, Buckley edited the volume Aspects of Robinson: Homage to Weldon Kees (2011). His books have been translated into sixteen foreign languages. He worked as a merchant seaman and White House speechwriter. He has written for many newspapers and magazines and has lectured in over 70 cities around the world. 

Buckley has won numerous honors and awards for his work, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Award to Yugoslavia, four Pushcart Prizes, the Gertrude B. Claytor Memorial Award, and the James Dickey Prize. He is professor emeritus at the University of California-Riverside.