Mark Doty's prose has been hailed as "tempered and tough, sorrowing and serene" ("The New York Times Book Review") and "achingly beautiful" ("The Boston Globe"). In "Still Life with Oysters and Lemon" he offers a stunning exploration of our attachment to ordinary things-how we invest objects with human store, and why.

Mark Doty is the author of six books of poems and two memoirs, Heaven's Coast and Firebird. A Guggenheim, Ingram-Merrill, and Whiting Fellow, he has also received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for Nonfiction. He teaches at the University of Houston, and divides his time between Houston and Provincetown, Massachusetts.