Robin Becker grew up in Philadelphia, studied and taught in Boston, and returned to Pennsylvania in 1993 to teach at Pennsylvania State University. Becker, who also teaches workshops at the Fine Arts Center in Provincetown, finds the teaching life compatible with her life as a poet.

Critic Enid Shomer described Becker’s 2000 collection of poems, The Horse Fair, as a “vibrant miscellany.” Her poems reflect her Russian-Jewish heritage and lesbianism, her interest in art history and art, and the experience of growing up in 1950s America. In The Horse Fair, her subjects range from the painter Rosa Bonheur to the Torah and personal tragedies. Poet Kathleen Aguero has said that Becker’s poems are “richly populated by friends, lovers, family” as they “chronicle a search for community.”

Becker grew up listening to her grandmother’s stories, learning from her the nuances of storytelling and her family’s history in Ukraine. Becker was also greatly influenced by the women writers whose poetry was available in the 1970s, including Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Maxine Kumin, Denise Levertov, and Susan Griffin.

Becker is poetry editor for the Women’s Review of Books. She has won fellowships from the Bunting Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her third collection of poems, All-American Girl, received the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry in 1997.