Jennifer Chang

Jennifer Chang is an American poet and scholar.

Life and career Jennifer Chang was born in New Jersey. She earned a BA from the University of Chicago in 1998, and an MFA from University of Virginia in 2002, where she returned to pursue a PhD and received her degree in 2017.

Her poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2012, The Nation, The New Yorker, Poetry, and A Public Space.

Chang's debut collection of poetry, The History of Anonymity, was published in 2008 by the University of Georgia Press. This collection of lyrical poems was an inaugural selection for the VQRs (Virginia Quarterly Review) Poetry Series and a finalist for the Shenandoah/Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers.

Her second book, Some Say the Lark, was published by Alice James Books in 2017. It was longlisted for the 2018 PEN Open Book Award and won the 2018 William Carlos Williams Award.

Chang's third collection of poems, An Authentic Life, published by the Copper Canyon Press in 2024, was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

She was an assistant professor of English and creative writing at George Washington University.

Chang is co-chair of the advisory board for Kundiman, an organization dedicated to the creation and cultivation of Asian American literature.

List of Selected Works

Poetry collections

Poems "Pastoral" (2008) "The Skin's Broken Aria" (2010) "Sonogram" (2010) "Again a Solstice" (2010) "Freedom in Ohio" (2013) "Patsy Cline" (2015) "Dorothy Wordsworth" (2016) "A Horse Named Never" (2017) "On Emotion" (2017) "The World" (2017)

Awards and honors Henry Hoyns Fellowship, University of Virginia Winner of the Virginia Quarterly Review'''s Poetry Series, for The History of Anonymity Finalist for the Shenandoah/Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, for The History of Anonymity'' 2005 Louis Untermeyer Scholarship at Bread Loaf Writers' Conference 2005 Selection for Best New Poets MacDowell Colony Fellowship Djerassi Resident Artists Program