The American poet and essayist Gerald Stern was born in Pittsburgh in 1925 and educated at the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University. He has authored sixteen books of poetry, four books of essays, and his work has appeared in countless journals and anthologies. In 1998, Stern was awarded the National Book Award for This Time: New and Selected Poems and in 2000 he was appointed the first poet laureate of New Jersey. He was recently inducted into the 2012 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

"Places You Wouldn't Believe" celebrates the opening of the Gerald Stern Papers, documenting his life and writing career. Using photographs, correspondence, ephemera, notebooks, manuscripts, and exerpts for interviews and essays, the exhibition places his personal history in conversations with his poetry.