Samuel John Hazo

Hazo received a Phi Beta Kappa Honorary Membership (1976), the Hazlett Award for Excellence in Literature (1986), the Forbes Medal for Outstanding Cultural Contributions to Western Pennsylvania (1987), the Pittsburgh Centre for the Arts Cultural Award (1995), the Elizabeth Kray Award for Outstanding Service to Poetry from New York University, and twelve honorary doctorates. For his collection of poems, Just Once, he received the Maurice English Poetry Award in 2003. A new collection of poems entitled A Flight To Elsewhere was published in 2005, as was a new prose collection entitled The Power of Less: Essays on Poetry And Public Speech. In 2004, he was honored with the Griffin Award for Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame, his alma mater. A National Book Award Finalist, he was chosen the first poet laureate of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by Governor Robert Casey in 1993, serving in that capacity until 2003.

Samuel John Hazo (born 19 July 1928) is a poet, playwright, fiction novelist, and the founder and director of the International Poetry Forum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is also McAnulty Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at Duquesne University, where he taught for forty-three years.

Hazo was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1928 to refugee parents, a Lebanese mother and an Assyrian father from Jerusalem. From 1950 until 1957 Hazo served in the United States Marine Corps, completing his tour as a captain. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame, and obtained his Master of Arts degree from Duquesne University, as well as a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh. He and his wife, Mary Anne, have one son, Samuel Hazo Jr., who is an American composer.