Jay Hopler was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1970 and he has earned degrees from Purdue University (Ph.D., American Studies), The Iowa Writers' Workshop (M.F.A., Creative Writing/Poetry), The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars (M.A., Creative Writing/Poetry) and New York University (B.A., English and American Literature).  His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in numerous magazines and journals including American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker and Slate.           
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, a 2006 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award 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, a Whiting Writers' Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation and a Rome Fellowship in Literature (The Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, a Gift from the Drue Heinz Trust) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy in Rome.  
    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.  He lives in Tampa and is Associate Professor of English (Creative Writing/Poetry) at the University of South Florida .