Born in Stockholm in 1931, Tomas Tranströmer (1931–1985) worked as a psychologist for juvenile offenders for many years.
His books of poetry include The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems (New Directions, 2006); The Half-Finished Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2001); New Collected Poems (1997); For the Living and the Dead (1995); Baltics (1974); Paths (1973); Windows and Stones (1972), an International Poetry Forum Selection and a runner-up for the National Book Award for translation; and Seventeen Poems (1954). He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2011 and has received multiple other awards, among them the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bonnier Award for Poetry, Germany’s Petrarch Prize, the Bellman Prize, the Swedish Academy’s Nordic Prize, and the August Prize. In 1997 the city of Västerås established a special Tranströmer Prize.