Poet Hugh Seidman was born in Brooklyn (New York City). He is the author of several collections, including Collecting Evidence (1970), which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize; Selected Poems: 1965–1995 (1995); People Live, They Have Lives (1992), which won the Camden Poetry Award; and Somebody Stand Up and Sing (2005), which won the New Issues Press Green Rose Prize. His poetry has been featured in The Best American Poetry (2002) and Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn (2007).
 
Seidman’s poems interrogate politics and culture, frequently connecting both to issues of the body and loss. A review of Selected Poems: 1965–1995 in the American Book Review noted, "Whether adding new elegies for both father and mother, rethinking our use of napalm thirty years ago, or looking at photos of present-day atrocities, Seidman’s voice contains a unique combination of ecstasy and anguish."
 
Seidman’s honors include grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the New York State Creative Artists Public Service as well as three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Seidman has taught at the University of Wisconsin, Yale University, Columbia University, and several other colleges and universities. He lives in New York City.