Donald Justice was born in Miami, Florida, in 1925 and grew up there. After graduating from the University of Miami, where he had studied musical composition with Carl Ruggles, he attended the University of North Carolina, Stanford and Iowa. His first book, 'The Summer Anniversaries', was the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1959. It was followed by 'Night Light' (1967), 'Departures' (1973) and 'Selected Poems' (1979) which the following year was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. He has also edited 'The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees' (1960). He has received grants in poetry from The Rockefeller Foundation, The Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.