Ulrich Baer was educated at Harvard and Yale and has been awarded John Simon Guggenheim, DAAD, Paul Getty, and Alexander von Humboldt Fellowships. He is University Professor at New York University, and has published, among other books, Remnants of Song: The Experience of Modernity in Charles Baudelaire and Paul Celan, Spectral Evidence: The Photography of Trauma, The Rilke Alphabet, 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11(editor), Beggar's Chicken: Stories from Shanghai, We Are But a Moment, and, as editor and translator, The Dark Interval: Rilke's Letters on Loss, Grief and Transformation, and Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters on Life (Modern Library). His podcast, Think About It, is devoted to in-depth conversations on powerful ideas, including freedom of speech, and language that changes the world. He lives in New York City.