Jason Koo

Jason Koo is a second-generation Korean American poet, educator, editor and nonprofit director. Born in New York City and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Koo is the author of four full-length collections of poetry: No Rest, forthcoming from Diode Editions in 2024, a winner of the Diode Editions Book Contest and a finalist for AWP's Donald Hall Prize for Poetry; More Than Mere Light (Prelude Books, 2018), a finalist for the National Poetry Series; America's Favorite Poem (C&R Press, 2014; Brooklyn Arts Press, 2020), a finalist for the CSU Poetry Center Open Competition; and Man on Extremely Small Island (C&R Press, 2009; Brooklyn Arts Press, 2020), winner of the De Novo Poetry Prize and the Asian American Writers' Workshop Members' Choice Award for the best Asian American book of 2009. He is also the author of the limited-edition chapbook & cassette tape Sunset Park (Frontier Slumber, 2017) and coeditor of the Brooklyn Poets Anthology (Brooklyn Arts Press & Brooklyn Poets, 2017). His work has been published in Best American Poetry 2022, Missouri Review, Poetry Northwest, Village Voice and Yale Review, among other places, and won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center and New York State Writers Institute. He earned his BA in English with Distinction from Yale, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Cum Laude; his MFA in creative writing from the University of Houston, where he was a Stella L. Erhardt Memorial Scholar; and his PhD in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri–Columbia, where he was a D. R. Francis Fellow. He is an associate teaching professor of English and the director of creative writing at Quinnipiac University, where he has won an Innovation Incubator Grant and an Innovations in Course Delivery Grant and twice been recognized as a semifinalist for the Center for Excellence in Teaching Award. He is the founder and executive director of Brooklyn Poets and creator of the Bridge, the world’s premier poetry network connecting poets and mentors. For his work with Brooklyn Poets, Koo was named one of the "100 Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture" by Brooklyn Magazine. He is represented by Ina Peterson of Inner Voice Artists.