Born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, Gary Jackson is the author of the poetry collections origin story (University of New Mexico Press, 2021), part of the Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series, and Missing You, Metropolis (Graywolf, 2010), which received the 2009 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. He’s also co-editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry (Blair, 2021). His poems have appeared in numerous journals including Callaloo, The Sun, Los Angeles Review of Books, Gulf Coast, and Copper Nickel. He’s published work in several anthologies, including Shattered: The Asian American Comics Anthology, African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, and A Measure of Belonging: Twenty-One Writers of Color on the New American South.
He was featured in the 2013 New American Poetry Series by the Poetry Society of America, and received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Art Omi. He’s been a guest on the BBC News World Service: The Cultural Frontline, and given readings and craft talks for Carnegie Hall, Folger Theater, and various venues across the country. In 2023, he was selected to serve as part of the Cave Canem Cultural Preservation Project Team to record the oral histories of the first-year fellows and founders of Cave Canem.
He’s taught classes and led workshops everywhere from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Charleston, South Carolina, to Anyang, South Korea, and currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the Toi Derricotte Endowed Chair of English in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, and the Director of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics.
Photo by Ben Chrisman