Carolyn Forché (born April 28, 1950) is an American poet, editor, professor, translator, and human rights advocate.

[8] She is co-chair, with Gloria Steinem, of the Creative Advisory Council of Hedgebrook, a residency for women writers on Whidbey Island.

After the publication of her second book, The Country Between Us, which included poems describing what she had personally experienced in El Salvador at the beginning of the Salvadoran Civil War, she responded to controversy concerning whether or not her work had become “political,” by researching and writing about poetry written in the aftermath of extremity in the 20th century.

The anthology Against Forgetting was intended to collect the work of poets who had endured the impress of extremity during the 20th century, whether through their engagements or force of circumstance.

These experiences included warfare, military occupation, imprisonment, torture, forced exile, censorship, and house arrest.

The anthology, composed of the work of one hundred and forty-five poets writing in English and translated from over thirty languages, begins with the Armenian Genocide and ends with the uprising of the pro-Democracy movement at Tiananmen Square.

In this she was influenced by Terrence des Pres, Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber, Simone Weil and Emmanuel Levinas.

[19] In November 2013, Forché was interviewed as both scholar and poet for the documentary Poetry of Witness, directed by independent filmmakers Billy Tooma and Anthony Cirilo.