STEPHEN BLUESTONE was born in New York City. His recent volume THE LAUGHING MONKEYS OF GRAVITY was nominated for the National Book Award in Poetry. THE FLAGRANT DEAD, his latest book, has been called “original and beautiful” by Gerald Stern. Louis Simpson has called the same volume “delightful and astonishing.” Stephen Bluestone has won The Greensboro Review Poetry Prize, The Thomas Merton Prize, two Hopwood Prizes, and second prize in the Robert Penn Warren Competition, in addition to an NEH Award and a Pushcart Prizes Special Mention.

In November, 2002 “Holiness Everywhere,” his free adaptation of a 12th-century work by Jehudah Halevi, set to music by Atlanta composer Curtis Bryant, was given its New York City premiere.  “O City!” a tribute to the victims of the 9/11 tragedy) was performed by the Gregg Smith Singers in New York City in February, 2003.  In September 2003 the world premiere of Curtis Bryant’s setting of “The Laughing Monkeys of Gravity” was performed at McCorkle Hall on the Mercer University campus. More recently, a collaboration with composer David H. Johnson has resulted in a new work, "Jerusalem Trilogy," which was first performed in the fall of 2007.

Stephen Bluestone teaches English and film in the College of Liberal Arts at Mercer University.

“Stephen Bluestone is a poet of enormous range and          a passionate imagination. The Flagrant Dead (a wonderful oxymoron!) is a stunning and accomplished book.  Read it!"                                                                                                                                –Thomas Lux

“Stephen Bluestone’s poems, haunted by voices from the far and recent past, take us through the difficult passages from melancholy and loss toward love. They are religious poems in the widest and best sense–searching, intelligent, expansive–poems whose achievement is beauty and spiritual wisdom.”

                                                                           –Susan Ludvigson