Jayanta Mahapatra is one of the best known Indian English poets. He is the first ever Indian poet to win Sahitya Akademi award for English poetry. He is the author of such popular poems as Indian Summer and Hunger, which are regarded as classics in modern Indian English literature. He is also a winner of Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian honour in India. He was born in Orissa in 1928. He is one of the popular Indian poets of his generation and a member of poet-trios who laid the foundations of Indian English Poetry. A. K. Ramanujan, a scholar of Indian literature was his close associative. Apart from being a gifted writer, he has also worked as a Physics professor in several Indian universities of Oriya. He taught at Gangadhar Meher College, Sambalpur, B.J.B College, Bhubaneswar, Fakir Mohan College, Balasore and Ravenshaw College, Cuttack.

Mahapatra has authored 27 books of poems, of which seven are in Oriya and the rest in English. His poetry volumes include Relationship, Bare Face and Shadow Space. Mahapatra is a Sahitya Akademi awardee, and also a recipient of the Jacob Glatstein award conferred by Poetry magazine, Chicago. He was also awarded the Allen Tate Poetry Prize for 2009 from The Sewanee Review, Sewanee, USA. He received the SAARC Literary Award, New Delhi, 2009. Besides poetry, he has experimented widely with myriad forms of prose. His published books of prose are Green Gardener, an anthology of short stories and Door of Paper: Essay and Memoirs. Mahapatra is also a distinguished editor and has been bringing out, for many years, a literary magazine, Chandrabhaga, from Cuttack. The magazine is named after Chandrabhaga, a prominent river in Orissa. His poems appeared in many prestigious poetry anthologies like The Dance of the Peacock: An Anthology of English Poetry from India, published by Hidden Brook Press, Canada. He was conferred the Padma Shri in 2009 by the president of India and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Ravenshaw University on 2 May 2009. He was also awarded Litt. D. degree by Utkal University in 2006.