Peter M. Sacks
Peter M. Sacks (born 1950) is an expatriate South African painter and poet living and working in the United States. Life Sacks was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and grew up in Durban, where he was educated at Clifton School (Durban) and Durban High School. His father was an obstetrician and taught at a black medical school. Sacks also studied medicine before transferring to the political science program at the University of Natal. As a student he gave speeches and organized anti-apartheid demonstrations. Sacks served a few months in the military, which was compulsory at the time, before receiving a scholarship to Princeton University. After Princeton (B.A. 1973), he attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar (M.Phil. 1976), and Yale University (PhD 1980). Sacks taught English at Johns Hopkins University between 1980 and 1996, being promoted to full professor in 1989. Since 1996, he has been a professor of English and American literature and language at Harvard University. His first wife was Barbara Kassel, a painter and teacher of painting. Sacks married Pulitzer-prize winning poet Jorie Graham in 2000. In 1999, during a residency at Marfa, Texas, Sacks began painting over photographs using thick white acrylic. Although he had