Best-selling novelist, biographer, editor, poet, and essayist, Michael Mott, who was also twice writer-in-residence at the College of William and Mary, first in 1978-79 and again in 1985-86, is one of those rare writers"”a genuine "man of letters" who has succeeded in every genre he has tried. Born and educated in England to an English lawyer and American sculptor, he first began publishing poetry in 1948. His most recent book of poems, The World of Richard Dadd, won the Robert E. Lee & Ruth I. Wilson Poetry Book Award. Mott's first novel, The Notebooks of Susan Berry, was a best-seller in England and was published by MacMillan in the United States. His second novel, Helmet and Wasps, was a critical success in both England and the United States. He has also published two novels for young adults, Master Entrick and The Blind Cross. Mott served as poetry editor for the prestigious Kenyon Review from 1966 to 1970. In 1974 Jimmy Carter presented him with a Governor's Award for his literary accomplishments. In between his two stints as William and Mary's writer-in-residence, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship and finished a biography The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, which was a finalist for the Pulitizer Prize, recipient of the Christopher Award, and a New York Times bestseller. He taught at Bowling Green State University for twelve years before retiring in 1992. Currently Mott lives in Williamsburg, where he continues to write fiction and poetry. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.