Charles Wright is an American poet, translator, and critic born on August 25, 1935, in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee.

Wright was educated at Christ School and went on to work as both a school teacher and a university teacher over the course of his career. He also took up translation, work that earned him the PEN Translation Prize, and he received a Fulbright Scholarship and a Guggenheim Fellowship along the way. His writing in English spans poetry and criticism, reflecting the range of roles he has held throughout his professional life.

The honors Wright has accumulated place him among the most decorated figures in American poetry. He received the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, as well as the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the Bollingen Prize. The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry followed, and he was later named United States Poet Laureate. Few American poets have collected that particular combination of prizes, and Wright holds them all.

Poetry is the genre at the center of Wright's work, and it is the thread that connects his roles as teacher, translator, and critic throughout his life.