George Economou was born in Great Falls, Montana, and was educated at Colgate and Columbia Universities. Named twice as Fellow in Poetry by the National Endowment for the Humanities, he also held fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies. He retired as Professor Emeritus of English after forty-one years of teaching, the last seventeen of which were at the University of Oklahoma. In retirement he lived in Philadelphia and Wellfleet, Massachusetts, until his death in 2019.