David R. Slavitt

David R. Slavitt was born in White Plains, New York, in 1935, and educated at Andover, Yale University, and Columbia University. 

A poet, translator, novelist, critic, and journalist, he is the author of more than seventy works of fiction, poetry, and poetry and drama in translation. His most recent collections of original poetry are Falling from Silence: Poems (Louisiana State University Press, 2001) and PS3569.L3 (Louisiana State University Press, 1998). 

Slavitt’s translations include Jean de Sponde’s Sonnets of Love and Death (Northwestern University Press, 2001); The Latin Odes of Jean Dorat (Orchises Press, 2000);The Book of the Twelve Prophets (Oxford University Press, 1999); Voyage of the Argo: The Argonautica of Gaius Valerius Flaccus (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s A Crown for the King (Oxford University Press, 1998); Joao Pinto Delgado’s Poem of Queen Esther (Oxford University Press, 1998); and Ausonius: Three Amusements (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). 

Slavitt’s other books include the nonfiction work The Book of Lamentations: A Meditation and Translation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) and Get Thee to a Nunnery: A Pair of Shakespearean Divertimentos (Catbird Press, 1999), a pair of novellas. He is also the coeditor of the Johns Hopkins Complete Roman Drama in Translation series and the Penn Greek Drama Series. 

Slavitt’s honors include a Pennsylvania Council on Arts award, a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, an award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Rockefeller Foundation Artist’s Residence. He lived in Philadelphia and was on the faculties of Bennington College and Yale University.

Slavitt died on May 17, 2025, at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.