Born in  Brooklyn,  NY  in  1963, Douglas Goetsch earned  a  BA  in Religious  Studies  at  Wesleyan  University,  an  MA  in  American Civilization  at  New  York  University,  and  an  MFA  in  Poetry  at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

His first full length collection Nobody’s Hell (1999) was praised by Robert McDowell for its “subtle technical skill and wicked good humor.” The Job of Being Everybody (2004), winner of the CSU Poetry Center Open Competition, prompted Billy Collins to remark, “It’s hard to imagine a reader who could resist Goetsch’s seductive opening lines.” Dick Allen has called Goetsch’s poetry “searing, honest, vivid, moving, unflinching. A glory of words and episodes and images.” And B.H. Fairchild has said, “It’s not just the way a Goetsch poem progresses from comedy to wisdom but the wonderfully tricky route it often takes getting there.”

In all, he has written three full-length collections and four prizewinning chapbooks. His work has appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, The Gettysburg Review, The American Scholar, Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Prize Anthology. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and numerous other awards.

For 21 years, he worked as a New York City public school teacher. He has also been on faculty at many writing conferences, in addition to several colleges and MFA programs. Most recently, he was Distinguished Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Western Kentucky University. He is also the founding editor of Jane Street Press, an independent poetry press in New York City.