Joshua Beckman was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and attended Hampshire College. An editor at Wave Books, he is the author of Things Are Happening (1998), winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Award, Something I Expected to Be Different (2001), Your Time Has Come (2001), Shake (2006), and Take It (2009). He has also collaborated with Matthew Rohrer on the book Nice Hat. Thanks (2002) and the CD Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty (2004).
 
In his introduction to Things Are Happening, poet Gerald Stern noted the “openness” of Beckman’s poems: “His identity is through affection. That is his print.” In a review for Coldfront magazine, John Deming commented: “Beckman’s traditionally a master at converting the personal to the existential in a deceptively plain-spoken way.”
 
Beckman co-edited State of the Union: 50 Political Poems (2008), an anthology of political poems, with Matthew Zapruder. He has also translated poems by Carlos Oquendo de Amat and Tomaž Šalamun.
 
Beckman lives in Seattle and in Brooklyn, New York.