Reginald Shepherd (1963-2008) was a Black, gay poet who grew up in the Bronx and went on to receive two MFAs, one from Brown University and one from the Iowa Writers Workshop. He authored two collections of poetry criticism and six poetry collections, all published by the University of Pittsburgh Press: Red Clay Weather, Fata Morgana, Otherhood, Wrong, Angel, Interrupted, and Some Are Drowning. His work has been widely awarded and anthologized and has appeared in four editions of The Best American Poetry and two Pushcart Prize anthologies. Shepherd received many awards and honors over his career, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others.

Jericho Brown is author of The Tradition, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown's first book, Please, won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition, won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University.

The discovery of Reginald Shepherd's poetry--in an envelope, with a letter and a stamped self-addressed return--was among the highest points of my five years as editor of the Kenyon Review. Of course his poems were published, and a correspondence, a friendship ensued. His premature death was devastating. Rereading these poems, I follow the arc of their music, wit, erudition, narrative, tragedy: the chronicle of an exemplary (Black, gay, American, polymath out of the projects) life, but first of all, I admire, am in a bit of awe of, and thoroughly enjoy them.--Marilyn Hacker, author of Calligraphies

The Selected Shepherd is a very welcome arrival that may encourage readers to re-discover an award-winning, fiercely intelligent poet, anthologist, and critic.-- "The Gay and Lesbian Review"

The extraordinary Reginald Shepherd remains both a tidal force and an enigmatic planet in contemporary poetry and in legendary Pitt Poetry Series editor Ed Ochester's vast constellation of stars. The brilliant Jericho Brown has distilled Shepherd's magnificence--a style born of the Bronx, rural Georgia, Iowa City, Eliot's Waste Land, and Orpheus's underworld--to a dynamic, essential volume. The Pitt Poetry Series is proud to present this landmark compilation.--Terrance Hayes, author of So to Speak and coeditor, Pitt Poetry Series