Kenneth Goldsmith is a poet and conceptual artist who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture. He served as a fellow of poetics and poetic practice at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, where he taught an undergraduate class that included creative writing and poetics, and also was part of a series of workshops and readings at the university's Kelly Writers House and the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing. Goldsmith also works as a host for Hoboken, New Jersey's WFMU radio.

In his writing, Goldsmith takes an unusual approach. Fidget is a chronicle of every movement of his body over a thirteen-hour period on Bloomsday, June 16, 1997, and serves as an homage to the work of Irish writer James Joyce, specifically to Joyce's Ulysses. A contributor for Publishers Weekly called it an "important book from Goldsmith, pointing the way to a rapproachment between poetry and conceptual and performance art—avant-gardists and art lovers of all stripes will want to experience its near-hypnotic pleasures." With Soliloquy, Goldsmith records his every word over a period of a week, everything from ordering food at a deli to a conversation with a cab driver. His side only is included, making for a puzzle effect. In a review for Publishers Weekly, a contributor remarked that the book "leaves the reader with a convinced sense that language, no matter how un-artful, does the heavy lifting in our lives, and has encoded the entire registry our being."