Kushner was born into a Jewish family in Leningrad; his father was a military engineer. He graduated from Herzen University and taught Russian literature from 1959 to 1969, after which he turned to the professional writing of verse. Over 30 years, he wrote about 15 books of verse and two books of essays and was a member of the Writers' Union (from 1965) and the Russian PEN Center (from 1987) as well as editor-in-chief of Biblioteka poeta (the "Library of the Poet" series). He has been a personal friend of Joseph Brodsky and Alexei Purin, among others. His only son Eugene and his family live in Israel.

In his poetry Alexander Kushner is sometimes considered to be close to Acmeism with a strong accent on general culture. He usually does not use free verse and does not experiment a lot with form, preferring a classic style. The Nobel Prize winner Brodsky characterized Kushner as "one of the best lyric poets of XX century, his name is to stand in the line of names dear to the heart of everyone whose native language is Russian"

His books of poetry have been translated into English, Italian, and Dutch; samples of his verse have appeared in German, French, Japanese, Hebrew, Czech, and Bulgarian.

Books of verse

• The First Impression () 1962.
• The Night Watch () 1966.
• Omens () 1969.
• The Writing () 1974.
• The Direct Speech () 1975.
• The Voice () 1978.
• Tavrichesky Garden () 1984.
• Day Dreams () 1986.
• The Fence Hedge () 1988
• Night Music () 1991.
• On the Dark Star () 1994.
• The Milfoil () 1998.
• Bank of Clouds () 2000.
• Bushes () 2002.
• The Cold May () 2005.
• In the New Century () 2006.
• One Cannot Choose Times...(five decades) () 2007.

Works in prose

• Apollo under Snow ()
• Wave and Stone ()
• The Fifth Element (selected verse and articles) ()

His numerous awards include the Russian National Award (1996) and the prestigious Pushkin Prize for poetry, bestowed on him by Russian president Vladimir Putin in 2001. [1]

Also

• «North Palmira» (1995).
• Award of "Novii Mir" magazine(1997).
• Tepfer fond Pushkin award(1998).
• Award of Tsarskoe selo(2004).
• "Poet" award(2005).