Robert Hazel was born in Indiana and attended George Washington University and Johns Hopkins University. He was poetry editor at The Nation. As a teacher of writing and literature, he was much loved by his students, who included Rita Mae Brown, Bobbie Ann Mason, Wendell Berry, Gurney Norman, and James Baker Hall, at the University of Kentucky, Oregon State, New York University, and Virginia Tech. He is the author of three novels and five collections of poetry. Robert Hazel died in 1993.