Jay Hopler was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1970 and he has earned degrees from New York University, The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and The Iowa Writers’ Workshop.  His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in numerous magazines and journals including The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review and The New Yorker.   
       
His book of poems, Green Squall (Yale University Press, 2006) was chosen by Louise Glück as the winner of the 2005 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award.  Green Squall also received the 2007 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, a 2006 Florida Book Award [Silver Medal in the Poetry Category], a 2006 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award [Bronze Medal in the Poetry Category] and a 2007 National “Best Books” Award from USA Book News.  He also has been the recipient of a Marfa Residency Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation and a Whiting Writers' Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation. 

The Killing Spirit: An Anthology of Murder-for-Hire, his first book, was published in the United States and Europe by The Overlook Press and Canongate Books in 1996.  His next book, The Yale Anthology of Younger American Poets, will be published by Yale University Press in 2010.  He is Assistant Professor of English (Creative Writing/Poetry) at the University of South Florida  and divides his time between Tampa and Salt Lake City where he lives with his wife, the poet, Kimberly Johnson.