Bruce Whiteman (born David Bruce Whiteman) was born on June 18, 1952, in Southern Ontario.

He is a Canadian poet, translator, editor, librarian, and essayist. He was educated at Trent University and the University of Toronto. After working as a Rare Books Department librarian at McMaster and McGill Universities, he moved to Los Angeles in 1996 to become a head librarian at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at UCLA, a position he held until 2010. Whiteman has published extensively as a poet, scholar, cultural historian, and book reviewer. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, including his long ongoing prose poem “The Invisible World is in Decline,” which has now reached the eighth book, with the ninth and final volume due for publication in 2022. His scholarly books include “Lasting Impressions: A Short History of English Publishing in Quebec” (1994) and “J.E.H. Macdonald” (1995). He has also written bibliographies of Leonard Cohen (1980) and Raymond Souster (1984). Whiteman lives in Peterborough, Ontario and regularly contributes book reviews and essays to publications such as TriQuarterly, Rattle, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.