For 30 years, until retirement in 1997, Dr. Coleman Barks taught poetry and creative writing at the University of Georgia. As a professor emeritus, Dr. Barks still resides in Athens and writes and publishes under his own imprint, Maypop Books, as well as HarperCollins, the University of Georgia Press, and others. In addition to several poetry collections and books, Dr. Barks is the author of numerous translations of Rumi and has been a student of Sufism since 1977. His work with Rumi, a Persian mystical poet, was the subject of an hourlong segment on Bill Moyers's Language of Life series on PBS, and he is a featured poet and translator in Bill Moyers's poetry special, "Fooling with Words." Dr. Barks makes frequent international appearances and is wellknown throughout the Middle East. His work has contributed to an extremely strong following of Rumi in the Englishspeaking world. Dr. Barks received his Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an honorary doctorate from Tehran University in 2006, and in March 2009 was inducted to the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

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