Jay Gao is a poet from Edinburgh, Scotland, living in New York City. His second poetry collection The Dead One, The Unconscious One, Thundering in Your Ear, Thriving Slumber is forthcoming in Fall 2026 from Nightboat Books and Carcanet Press. His debut collection Imperium (Carcanet, 2022) was a winner of the 2023 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize, an Eric Gregory Award and a Somerset Maugham Award. Currently he is a PhD candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. ​​

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His pamphlets and chapbooks include: Bark, Archive, Splinter (2024) and Bark, Archive, Splinter (2024). He earned his MFA in Literary Arts (Poetry) from Brown University. He was a co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network, a mentor for the Ledbury Emerging Poetry Critics Programme, and a former Contributing Editor for The White Review. He is represented by Matt Turner at RCW Literary Agency.