"While We're Here has a shapeliness, a concentrated structural coherence, rare at any time. About darkness and destructiveness, the ancient no always rising from primal darkness to erase brightness, it is itself a book of light. Heartening; a genuine achievement."

Steven Henry Madoff was born in New York City and educated at Columbia University, where he was the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Poetry Prize and was the editor of the Columbia Review. He went on to do his graduate work on a fellowship in literature at Stanford University. His art criticism has been published widely and translated into many languages. He was the executive editor of ARTnews magazine from 1987-1994 and in 1997 published Pop Art: A Critical History with University of California Press. He is currently an editor at Time Inc. He lives in South Salem, New York, with his wife and two children.