Disappearing Ox

Lewis Hyde is a celebrated poet, translator, essayist, and cultural critic. Hyde has been the recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a Lannan Literary fellowship. Hyde is a former professor of creative writing and American literature at Kenyon College, and former director of undergraduate writing at Harvard University. In previous works like The Gift (1983), Trickster Makes This World (1998), and Common as Air (2010), Hyde explores the role of art in cultural imagination, defending the non-commerciality of artistic practice and exploring the ways ideas from the past inform the present. Hyde's most recent book, A Primer for Forgetting (2019), investigates when forgetfulness might be more useful than memory. Hyde is a trustee of the MacDowell Colony and a founding director of the Creative Capital Foundation. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, the writer Patricia Vigderman.