Gary Jackson

Born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, Gary Jackson is the author of the poetry collections small lives (University of New Mexico Press, 2025), origin story (University of New Mexico Press, 2021), and Missing You, Metropolis (Graywolf, 2010), which received the 2009 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. He coedited The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry (Blair, 2021), and his poems have appeared in journals including Callaloo, The Sun, and Copper Nickel. Jackson is the Toi Derricotte Endowed Chair of English in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and the director of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, both at the University of Pittsburgh.