Jay Hopler

Jay Hopler was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1970 and has earned degrees from New York University, The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Purdue University. His poetry, essays, and translations have appeared in numerous magazines and journals including The American Poetry ReviewThe BelieverThe NationThe New Republic, and The New Yorker and he was the recipient of honors such as The Yale Series of Younger Poets Award (for Green Squall), a Whiting Writers Award, and the Rome Prize in Literature. In 2016, his second book of poems, The Abridged History of Rainfall, was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry. His second book of poems, Still Life, was published by McSweeney’s in 2022, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Other publications include two anthologies (The Killing Spirit: A Book of Contractual Murder and, with Kimberly Johnson, Before the Door of God: An Anthology of Devotional Poetry) and collection of German translations (The Museum of Small Dark Things: 25 Poems of Georg Trakl). Though he resided in Salt Lake City’s Sugarhouse neighborhood, he directed the Creative Writing Program for the University of South Florida. He was married to poet and Renaissance scholar Kimberly Johnson. Jay Hopler died June 15, 2022.

Work

Bibliography 

Still Life, San Francisco: McSweeney’s Poetry Series, 2022.

The Museum of Small Dark Things: 25 Poems by Georg Trakl.  Selected and Translated from the German.  San Diego: Poetry International, 22/23, San Diego State University, 2017.

The Abridged History of Rainfall. San Francisco: McSweeney’s Poetry Series, 2016.

Before the Door of God: An Anthology of Devotional Poetry.  Edited with Kimberly Johnson.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.

Green Squall. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

The Killing Spirit: An Anthology of Murder-for-Hire [American Edition].  Edited with an introduction.  New York: Overlook Press, 1996.  Overlook Press published the American paperback edition in May 1998.  

Additional Info

  • Region: Wasatch Front
  • Genre: Poetry