Robert Pinsky is a poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as poet laureate consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky founded the Favorite Poem Project, which has touched thousands of people of varying backgrounds and ages. In addition to his own poetry, his published work also includes critically acclaimed translations, including a collection of poems by Czeslaw Milosz and Dante Alighieri. Pinsky has been honored with a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, a Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing, an Ambassador Book Award in Poetry, and an Academy of American Poets' Translation Award. He recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the PEN American Center. His Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux) was published in 2011. He was a Pew Fellowships panelist at the Center in 2010.