Jean Valentine: Jean Valentine is the current State Poet of New York. She is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, which won the National Book Award for Poetry. She has earned many of the country's highest honors for her work, including the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and The Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Prize. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, and Columbia University. She lives in New York City.