John Yau was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1950, shortly after his parents left Shanghai, China. In 1972, at the age of twenty-two, Yau graduated from Bard College with a bachelor’s degree. Six years later, he received his M.F.A. degree from Brooklyn College.

After that, Yau wrote seventeen books of poetry. Three of these, published in the early 2000s, are Borrowed Love Poems (2002), in which the poem “Russian Letter” appears; Ing Grish (2005); and Paradiso Diaspora (2006). He also wrote several books about artists, including one on the famous modern American artist Andy Warhol. Yau’s essays about artists and their works have been published in various books dedicated to art criticism. In addition, Yau is the author of two collections of short stories, My Symptoms (1998) and Hawaiian Cowboys (1995), which, despite its title, contain stories mostly about people living in New York City...