Edward Dorn (1929-1999) was an American poet, writer, and teacher. He was born in Villa Grove, Illinois and attended the University of Illinois, Eastern Illinois University, and Black Mountain College, where he studied under Charles Olson and Robert Creeley. During his long career, he taught at a number of institutions, including Idaho State University, the University of Essex in England (where he lived for five years) and the University of Colorado. During that same time he established himself as a poet. The numerous volumes of poetry he published show originality and diversity, and his style varies from lyric to narrative and from meditative to satiric. Though he avoids traditional meter and rhyme, his verse can still achieve a tone of formality and elegance. Thematically, he often expresses his concern for the underprivileged and disadvantaged. For example, the plight of the American Indian has been a consistent theme in his work. Consensus of opinion indicates that the Gunslinger series (1968-1972; published as Slinger in 1975), a poem in four books, is his most notable work, a kaleidoscopic effort revolving around the mythic figure of the gunslinger of the old West.

While teaching and developing his skills as a poet, Dorn also wrote a screenplay, short stories, and a novel, Rites of Passage (1965), later revised as By the Sound (1971). He helped to translate the poems of Cesar Vallejo, Jose Emilio Pacheco, and other Latin American poets. He also edited several newspapers: Bean News and, more notably, Rolling Stock. The latter, published from 1981 to 1991, has been described as a "newspaper of ideas" and has been called the "chronicle of the 1980s." Among the many outstanding contributors to the paper were: Stan Brakhage, Tom Raworth, Fielding Dawson, and Jeremy Prynne. In addition to his Black Mountain associates: Creeley, Olson, and Robert Duncan, Dorn was a close friend or acquaintance of a rich circle of literary and artistic figures, including the black American dramatist and poet, LeRoi Jones, who later went by the name Amiri Baraka. Indeed, it was Jones's Totem Press that published Dorn's first volume of poetry, The Newly Fallen (1961).

With regard to family, Dorn met his first wife, Helene Buck, in 1951. During his years at the U. of Essex in England, he met and married the writer and filmmaker, Jennifer Dunbar, who later co-edited the paper Rolling Stock. He died of pancreatic cancer in 1999. Dorn is survived by his wife, two sons, Paul Buck and Kidd Dorn, as well as by his daughter, Maya Dorn.