W. S. Di Piero was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1945. He often writes about growing up in his neighborhood of South Philadelphia, and the Italian-American working class families who largely populated the area. Di Piero received his bachelor’s degree from St. Joseph’s College and his master’s degree from San Francisco State College. He has also had a long teaching career at such universities as Louisiana State University, Northwestern University, and Stanford University, where he still teaches. He has won numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including a Fulbright-Hays research grant in Italy, an Ingram-Merrill Foundation Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Di Piero was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001. He lives in San Francisco.