Biography
A recipient of four Fulbright Fellowships, John High has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (fiction and translation), the Witter Bynner Foundation, and Arts International. He is a former member of the Moscow Club Poetry and a founding editor of Five Fingers Review. Poet, translator, Zen monk—he has written ten books, including the novel, The Desire Notebooks. vanishing acts is the fourth volume in the interconnected series of poetry collections following here, a book of unknowing, and you are everything you are not. His translations of contemporary Russian poetry include books by Nina Iskrenko, Ivan Zhdanov, and Aleksei Parshchikov; he is the chief editor for Crossing Centuries—The New Generation in Russian Poetry. His translations of Osip Mandelstam have appeared in The Nation, Fulcrum, Denver Quarterly, Pen America, Ugly Duckling Presse, and Poetry. Recent readings include Istanbul, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Paris, Hangzhou, Venice, and New York. Recent work has appeared in Verse, New American Writing, The Brooklyn Rail, Ugly Duckling Presse (6×6), Brooklyn Paramount, Poems by Sunday, Visceral Brooklyn, Conjunctions, Poetry Northwest, and Paris Lit Up. Poems from this four-book series have been translated into French and Russian for the Paris Ivy Series and The St. Petersburg literary journal, Kreshchatik. He has taught creative writing and literature in Moscow, Istanbul, Hangzhou, and San Francisco, and currently directs the MFA Creative Writing Program at LIU Brooklyn.