On June 5, 1950, John Yau, was born in Lynn, Massachusetts. His father, a Chinese-American bookkeeper, met his mother, who was descended from a prestigious Shanghai family, while living in China. Yau's parents settled in Boston after emigrating from China in 1949. Yau studied at Boston University and received his BA from Bard College. He received his MFA from Brooklyn College.

In 1976, he published his first collection of poetry, Crossing Canal Street (Bellevue Press, 1976). Since then, he has published many books of poetry, including Exhibits (Letter Machine Editions, 2010); Borrowed Love Poems (Penguin, 2002); Forbidden Entries (Black Sparrow Press, 1996); Berlin Diptychon (Timken, 1995); Edificio Sayonara (Black Sparrow Press, 1992); and Corpse and Mirror (Holt Rinehart, 1983); which was a National Poetry Series book selected by John Ashbery.

Yau is also an art critic whose books of criticism include In the Realm of Appearances: The Art of Andy Warhol (Ecco, 1993), A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns (D.A.P., 1997), and The Passionate Spectator: Essays on Art and Poetry (University of Michigan Press, 2006). He has also published a novel and edited Fetish (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1998), a fiction anthology.

Yau has received numerous awards including the Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the American Poetry Review Jerome Shestack Award, and a 1988 New York Foundation for the Arts Award. He is also the recipient of a 1977 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, two Ingram-Merrill Foundation Fellowships, and grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

Arlo Quint is the author of Drawn In (Fewer & Further Press), Hospitality in the Forest (Rust Buckle Books), Photogenic Memory (Lame House), and Days on End (Open 24 Hours). He helps edit Brawling Pigeon and The Recluse. His book Death to Explosions is forthcoming from Skysill.

External Link »