Stephen Dunn was the first in his family to attend college. As fellow Hofstra students, we are proud that Dunn attended Hofstra University on a basketball scholarship. In an interview with Poets and Writers, Dunn said “My first job out of college was writing in-house brochures for Nabisco in New York, and I kept getting promoted. I was in danger, literally, of becoming like the men who were around me. So I quit and went to Spain to write a novel, and wrote a bad one. But I was trying to write poetry too, and those efforts seemed more promising. The rest, as they say, is history, or my history.” After his time in Spain, he attended the New School. He received his MA in creative writing from Syracuse University.
He has taught at Wichita State University, University of Washington, Columbia University, University of Michigan, Princeton University, and at Stockton University.