Deborah Landau studied at Stanford University, Columbia University, and Brown University, where she was a Jacob K. Javits Fellow and earned a PhD in English and American Literature. For many years she co-directed the KGB Bar Monday Night Poetry Series and co-hosted the video interview program Open Book on Slate.com. In 2016, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Landau is director of the Creative Writing Program at New York University, where she also teaches. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, sons, and daughter.