Robert Peters received a PhD in Victorian Literature in 1952 from the University of Wisconsin and retired in 1994 from his work as a Professor Emeritus from the University of California at Irvine, where he taught English for three decades. With his longtime partner, Paul Trachtenberg - in their third decade together - he now lives a fulfilling life in Huntington Beach, California.

He has served as a Contributing Editor for The American Book Review, Contact II, and Paintbrush. He has also judged competitions for fellowships and prizes for an assortment of small presses and for the Poetry Society of America and PEN International.

A leading fiction writer, playwright, editor, and actor, Robert Peters was recently designated by the editors of "The James White Review" as, after Ginsberg's death, the "outest" of all major American poets. He has also enjoyed Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and won the Alice de Castagnola Prize of the Poetry of America, the Larry P. Fine for Criticism, and the Kerouac Award for Poetry.

His poems reflect much pain and suffering - the death of his four and a half year old son, Richard, from meningitis; the suicide of his friend, Gary; the price that comes from choosing to live unconventionally - both in his personal and intellectual life.