Stephen Berg was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended the University of Pennsylvania for three years and studied at Boston University under Robert Lowell for one year. He received a B.A. from the University of Iowa in 1959. Berg was an instructor in English at Temple University (1961-1964), and he is currently an assistant professor of English at Philadelphia College of the Arts. He also serves in the creative writing programs at Princeton University and at Haverford College. Berg married Millie Lane in 1959, and the couple has two daughters.

Berg is a talented poet, translator, and editor. His poems and free variations have appeared in the Nation, New York Review of Books, New Republic, Iowa Review, and Antaeus. He was poetry editor for the Saturday Evening Post from 1961 to 1962, and he was cofounder and is now coeditor (with Stephen Parker and Rhoda Schwartz) of the American Poetry Review...