Stephen Dobyns has published twenty-one works of fiction, a book of essays on poetry (Best Words, Best Order), and ten books of poems, most recently Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides, which has been called "a cycle of medieval morality poems for a new Dark Age."

Dobyns' poems have won many awards and prizes, his novels have been translated into some fifteen languages, and two of them have been made into films. Whether working in prose or poetry, he is a story-teller of great playfulness, caustic wit, and heartfelt tenderness, provocative and deeply curious. Dobyns has taught at many colleges and universities; currently he lives outside Boston and is a contributing writer for the San Diego Reader.