William O'Daly has translated eight books of the late-career and posthumous poetry of Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda and most recently Neruda's first volume, Book of Twilight, a finalist for the 2018 Northern California Book Award in Translation. O'Daly's chapbooks of poems include The Whale in the Web, The Road to Isla Negra, Water Ways (a collaboration with JS Graustein), and Yarrow and Smoke. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, he was a finalist for the 2006 Quill Award in Poetry and in September 2021 received the American Literary Award from the bilingual Korean American journal Miju Poetry and Poetics. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, his poems, translations, essays, and reviews have been published in numerous journals and as part of multimedia exhibits and performances. He has received national and regional honors for literary editing and instructional design and served on the national board of Poets Against War. Currently, he is Lead Writer for the California Water Plan, the state's strategic plan for sustainably and equitably managing water resources.