A. Van Jordan

A. Van Jordan (born 1965) is an American poet. He is a professor at Stanford University and was previously a college professor in the Department of English Language & Literature at the University of Michigan and distinguished visiting professor at Ithaca College. He previously served as the first Henry Rutgers Presidential Professor at the Rutgers University-Newark. and also holds an additional MFA in Screenwriting from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He lived in Washington, D.C., from 1988 to 2002.

Career Jordan is the author of four full-length collections. Rise (Tia Chucha Press, 2001) won the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (2005), about MacNolia Cox, which was listed as one of the Best Books of 2005 by The Times (London); Quantum Lyrics (2007); and The Cineaste (W.W. Norton & Co., 2013). In 2013 he published a chapbook called The Homesteader, and in 2021, he published an ekphrastic chapbook, I Want to See My Skirt, in collaboration with filmmaker Cauleen Smith, based on photographs by Malian photographer Malick Sidibé. Both of his chapbooks were published by Unicorn Press, Greensboro, NC, and edited by Andrew Saulters.

Jordan taught at Warren Wilson College, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of Texas at Austin, where he was tenured as an associate professor, and as professor at the University of Michigan. In 2014, he became Rutgers University-Newark's first Henry Rutgers Presidential Professor, among other publications.

Awards 2002: Whiting Award 2005: Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards 2006: Pushcart Prize XXX 2007: Guggenheim Fellowship 2008: United States Artist Williams Fellowship 2015: Lannan Literary Award in Poetry

Works "Einstein Defining Special Relativity"; "Einstein Ruminates on Relativity", Reading Between A&B

Poetry Rise (Tia Chucha Press, 2001) M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (W. W. Norton & Company, 2004) Quantum Lyrics (W. W. Norton & Company, 2007) The Cineaste (W. W. Norton & Company, 2013)

Essays

Personal life Jordan is married to Shirley Collado, a professor of psychology and former president of Ithaca College.