Michael Hofmann, the son of Gert Hofmann, was born in Freiburg, West Germany, in 1957. He is the author of four books of poems, Nights in the Iron Hotel, Acrimony, Corona, Corona, and Approximately Nowhere, and two collections of essays, Behind the Lines and Where Have You Been?, as well as numerous translations from German, including works by Joseph Roth, Peter Stamm, Gottfried Benn, Franz Kafka, and Hans Fallada. His Selected Poems were published in 2008.