Diane Ackerman was born on October 7, 1948, in Waukegan, Illinois. Ackerman was born to Sam Fink, a local shoes salesman, and Marsha Tischler Fink, whom Ackerman describes as a “seasoned world traveler.” Spending most of her youth living in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Ackerman states that she can remember having “poetic tendencies,” even at a young age. She remembers “flushing with wonder at the sight of my first metaphor the living plums: the bats.”
As a child, Ackerman had an outlandish fascination with “boy-like” things. Nature, animals, astronomy, and the universe were subjects that intrigued the young writer and are still the most popular topics that she explores today. Ackerman attended Boston College from 1966-1967 and then transferred to the Pennsylvania State University where she received her B.A. in English in 1970.
Determined, Ackerman continued her education at Cornell where, over a seven-year period, she earned a Master in Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in Creative Writing and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Literature. Although Ackerman remains childless, she has been married to Paul West, also a writer, for 29 years. Since early in her career, Ackerman has been considered a plethora of things: poet, author, travel writer, and essayist. Even Ackerman herself is not sure of exactly what to call herself. Whatever the endeavor, Ackerman can be described as “brimming with the infectious enthusiasm generally only found in children,” a description she is happy to accept.
Ackerman has been presented with many prestigious awards and honors throughout her career. While attending graduate school, she was awarded various awards for her work, including the Academy of American Poets Prize, which aims to provide the most important collection of awards for poetry in the United States. Again, in 1985 the Academy of American Poets honored her with the Peter I.B. Lavan Award, an award that recognizes talent among young poets whom have published at least one full-length book of poetry.
Ackerman has also been given the honor of participating as a panel judge in many prestigious poetry competitions, including those of the New York Foundation for the Arts (1987) and National Endowment for the Arts (1991), evidence of the respect this gifted writer has gained from her fellow poets. She has also received grants from organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the nation’s largest annual founder of the arts, dedicated to supporting excellence in the world of art, bringing the arts to all citizens of the United States, and providing leadership in arts education.
Although Ackerman has received ample praise for many of her poetic works, A Natural History of the Senses (1990), a work of prose, is perhaps her most important literary contribution to date. Described as an “encyclopedia of the senses,” this book, celebrating the power of human perception, is intermixed with an assortment of history, biology, anthropology, cultural fact, and folklore. This best seller, a surprise to Ackerman, has been published in 16 countries and is in the process of being development into a PBS series entitled “The Senses.”
Other books that have received notoriety include Twilight of the Tenderfoot (1980), a work of prose that recounts her adventures living the life of a cowhand at a cattle ranch located in the heart of New Mexico. On Extended Wings (1985), a memoir, illustrates her experiences as a student pilot and has been described by Karen Rile, a book reviewer, as “a poet’s notebook with wings” because of her brilliant use of metaphors to describe her unique experience.