Major Jackson
Major Jackson earned a B.S. from Temple University and an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Oregon. He currently is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University.
Jackson is the author of six books of poetry, including Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems (2023), The Absurd Man (2020), Roll Deep (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006), and Leaving Saturn (2002), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. He also is the author of A Beat Beyond: The Selected Prose of Major Jackson (2022(. His edited volumes include Best American Poetry 2019 and Library of America’s Countee Cullen: Collected Poems.
Jackson is the recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, John S. Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. In addition to being honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress, Jackson is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves as the poetry editor of The Harvard Review.