Daniel Weissbort is a poet, translator and academic, best known for his translations and anthologies of Russian and Eastern European poetry. Born in London in 1935, he was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he met his life-long friend Ted Hughes. In 1965 Hughes and he founded the journal Modern Poetry in Translation, which is still appearing today; Daniel himself edited it from 1965 to 2003. He later went to America and from 1974 until the late 1990s held positions at the University of Iowa, as Director of its Translation Workshop and MFA Program in Translation and as Professor of English and Comparative Literature. He is Emeritus Professor of English and  Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa, Honorary Professor at Warwick University, and Research Fellow in English at King's College, London University.  He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Daniel has returned to England, where he writes poetry, teaches, lectures and works on the translation and popularization of Russian literature with his wife Valentina Polukhina. He has published numerous collections of translations and has edited several anthologies and collections of his own poetry, including Letters to Ted, a collection of poetry dedicated to his late friend.

He recently edited Selected Translations of Ted Hughes for Faber & Faber, and has completed a book called Ted Hughes and Translation for OUP, having edited for the same publisher A Historical Reader in Translation Theory and Practice.