Major Jackson

Major Jackson (born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American poet and professor at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of five collections of poetry: The Absurd Man (W.W. Norton, 2020), Roll Deep (W.W. Norton, 2015), Holding Company (W.W. Norton, 2010), Hoops (W.W. Norton, 2006), finalist for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature-Poetry, and Leaving Saturn (University of Georgia, 2002), winner of the 2000 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and finalist for a National Book Critics Award Circle. His edited volumes include: Best American Poetry 2019, Renga for Obama, and Library of America's Countee Cullen: Collected Poems.

His poems and essays have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry London, Orion Magazine, The Yale Review, among other fine publications. His poetry has received critical attention in The Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, World Literature Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. His work has been included in many anthologies including The Best American Poetry 2004 (Scribner, 2004), The Pushcart Prize XXIX: Best of the Small Presses, (W.W. Norton & Company, 2004) Schwerkraft, From the Fishouse (Persea Books, 2009), and The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation (W.W. Norton & Company, 2010).

He earned degrees from Temple University and the University of Oregon. Major Jackson is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. From 2002 until 2020, he taught at the University of Vermont as the Richard A. Dennis Professor of English and University Distinguished Professor. He is a former graduate faculty member of the New York University Creative Writing Program and the Bennington Writing Seminars. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.