Peter Stitt was born in October 1940, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He attended the University of Minnesota, where he earned his B.A. in 1962 and his M.A. in 1964.

In addition to serving as editor of The Gettysburg Review, Peter Stitt is a professor in the Department of English at Gettysburg College. He earned a doctorate at the University of North Carolina in 1970 and has taught at Middlebury College and University of Houston. He is a critic of contemporary literature and was the poetry reviewer for the Georgia Review. As editor of The Gettysburg Review, he was the first recipient of the PEN/Nora Magid Award for Excellence in Editing. His work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, The Ohio Review, The Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and other journals. He is the author of The World's Hieroglyphic Beauty: Five American Poets. In his book, Uncertainty and Plenitude: Five Contemporary Poets, Peter Stitt writes about five of his favorite poets: John Ashbery, Stephen Dobyns, Charles Simic, Gerald Stern, and Charles Wright.