Named one of the "100 Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture" by Brooklyn Magazine, Jason Koo was born in New York City and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the author of three full-length collections of poetry: More Than Mere Light (Prelude Books, 2018), America's Favorite Poem (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2020; C&R Press, 2014) and Man on Extremely Small Island (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2020; C&R Press, 2009), 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 chapbook Sunset Park (Frontier Slumber, 2017) and coeditor of the Brooklyn Poets Anthology (Brooklyn Arts Press & Brooklyn Poets, 2017). He has published his poetry and prose in the American Scholar, Missouri Review, Village Voice and Yale Review, among other places, and won fellowships for his work from the National Endowment for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center and New York State Writers Institute. He earned his BA in English from Yale, his MFA in creative writing from the University of Houston and his PhD in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri–Columbia. An associate teaching professor of English at Quinnipiac University, Koo has also taught writing at NYU and Lehman College–CUNY, where he served as the director of the graduate program in English, and as a senior writer-in-residence for Writers in the Schools. He is the founder and executive director of Brooklyn Poets and creator of the Bridge. He lives in Beacon, NY.