Summary
Frank Bergon was born in Ely, Nevada, on February 24, 1943, and raised on a ranch in San Joaquin Valley, California. He received his B.A. in English from Boston College, and in 1965, he attended Stanford University as a Wallace Stegner Fellow in 1966. He was a Woodrow Wilson fellow from 1966-67, and received his Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Harvard University in 1973. He was an American Council of Learned Societies fellow from 1979-80. He is Professor Emeritus of English at Vassar College, where he joined the faculty in 1972 and taught senior composition, Native American literature, and environmental studies. During his tenure there he was Director of American Studies. He was a visiting associate professor at the University of Washington in Seattle from 1980-81. In 1985-86 he was a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow.
His writing focuses on the history and environment of the American West, particularly writing about Native Americans and Basque Americans in the West. He has published several novels and anthologies, as well as edited the Penguin Nature Classics edition of The Journals of Lewis and Clark. He and his wife have published translations of Spanish poets.