Dan Chiasson

Dan Chiasson (; born May 9, 1971) is an American poet, critic, and journalist. The Sewanee Review called Chiasson "the country's most visible poet-critic." He is the Lorraine Chao Wang Professor of English Literature and Chair of the English Department at Wellesley College. Chiasson is the author of seven books: The Afterlife of Objects (University of Chicago Press, 2002), Natural History (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), One Kind of Everything: Poem and Person in Contemporary America (University of Chicago Press, 2007), Where's the Moon, There's the Moon (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), Bicentennial (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), The Math Campers (Alfred A. Knopf, 2020), and Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People's Politician. Bernie for Burlington is a both "biography of Bernie's political rise" and a memoir of what Chiasson calls "a very unusual American experiment, a modern city run by a charismatic socialist and his smart, young administration, during the eight years when Ronald Reagan was in the White House." Chiasson added "I'm actually one of the outcomes of the experiment, and so is my book, looking back on the transformation of Burlington and the thrilling rise of Bernie and his ideas." Nicholson Baker called it "a book we need right now," a "big, lovingly-woven, Whitmanesque wicker work of grievances and glories, home truths and triumphs." Robert Pinsky praised its "wild variety of stories, voices and characters," and added "Dan Chiasson of Burlington, Vermont and American poetry is a masterful narrator."

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