John Burt

John Burt was born in Washington DC, raised in West Hartford, Connecticut. He studied Biochemistry and English in college, and received a Ph.D in English at Yale. He has taught at the University of Nevada at Reno, and, for more than forty years, at Brandeis University, where he is Paul Prosswimmer Professor of American Literature. His scholarship centers on Lincoln and the political crisis of the 1850s, and on the poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren (for whom he is literary executor and whose collected poems he edited). He has also published three volumes of poetry and (so far) one novel.

Daniel Walker Howe wrote of Lincoln's Tragic Pragmatism: "Thoroughly informed by historical learning and philosophical sophistication, literary critic John Burt provides a detailed analysis of the Lincoln–Douglas debates in their original context, scrupulously fair to both parties. This is the most profound exploration of the enduring significance of Lincoln’s rhetoric since Harry Jaffa’s classic [Crisis of the House Divided] of 1959. A magnificent achievement." Lincoln's Tragic Pragmatism was reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review when it came out.

Richard Howard said of The Way Down (Princeton University Press, 1988) his first volume of poetry "For the sake of contraption (like Frost) and of character (like Robinson), John Burt will do a great deal, and his scope and scansion require a great deal, for his theme is nothing less than the reinvention of heroism (King Mark, Mary of Nazareth, St. Francis, Paolo and Francesca, Ariadne) and the invention of a new heroics (Woodrow Wilson, Willard Gibbs). As attentive to ekphrasis as to the sonnet's narrow room, Burt feels what he knows, and he knows that we can learn from the past only by repeating it. A grand achievement!"

Allen Grossman said of Work without Hope (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), his second volume of poetry, that "John Burt is one of the best storytellers among poets now writing in America."

Of his third volume of poetry, Victory (2007, Turning Point Press) Rosanna Warren said "Victory is a victory: a triumph of story-telling, and of moral and imaginative engagement with history. Each of the poems turns the idea of victory over and over, asking what it costs, what it proves, what it wins, what stoic dignity survives utmost degradation or trial."

His debut novel, A Moment's Surrender, won the Prize Americana for 2024, and was published in January 2026. Christopher Castellani said of it "The mystery at the core of John Burt's psychologically rich and emotionally satisfying debut is not only what killed famed poet Tom Corbin; it's how Fate — in its ravenous appetite for trouble — has undone and will ultimately remake the man, women, and child in his immediate orbit. A Moment's Surrender shimmers with intelligence and with astute insight into the many ways we all possess to destroy and save each other."