Karl (Jay) Shapiro

Writer, born in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He studied at the University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins, and Pratt Library School, Baltimore, then taught at many institutions, notably at the University of California, Davis (from 1968). He was noted for his mastery of poetic forms, as seen in Collected Poems, 1940–77 (1978) and New & Selected Poems, 1940–86 (1987), and in 1945 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for V-Letter and Other Poems. He also edited literary periodicals (1950–66), and had written literary criticism and a novel.

Karl Jay Shapiro (November 10, 1913 – May 14, 2000) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning United States poet, famous for his poetry written in the Pacific Theater while he served there during World War II. His collection V-Letter and Other Poems, written while Shapiro was stationed in New Guinea, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1945, while Shapiro was still in the military.