Visiting Writer Series: Oliver de la Paz and Jason Koo

Oliver de la Paz is the author of two collections of poetry, Names Above Houses and Furious Lullaby, both published by Southern Illinois University Press. He chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian American Poetry. A recipient of a NYFA Fellowship Award and a GAP Grant from Artist Trust, his work has appeared in journals like Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. He teaches at Western Washington University in Bellingham. Jason Koo is the author of Man on Extremely Small Island, winner of the 2008 De Novo Poetry Prize. He holds a B.A. in English from Yale, an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Houston, and a Ph.D. in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri-Columbia. The recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, he has published his poetry and prose in numerous journals, including The Yale Review, North American Review and The Missouri Review. He currently lives in New York, where he teaches at NYU and Lehman College and serves as Poetry Editor of Low Rent.