John Keene

Editorial Board Member, since 2012

Rutgers University

John Keene is the author, co-author, co-editor, and translator of a handful of books, including Love Is a Dangerous Word: The Selected Poems of Essex Hemphill (2025), co-edited with Robert F. Reid-Pharr; and Punks: New & Selected Poems (2021), which received a host of awards, including the 2022 National Book Award for Poetry and a 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. The recipient of many honors, he has translated poetry and fiction by an array of authors, including Brazilian author Hilda Hilst’s Letters from a Seducer, which was republished by Pushkin Press in 2025. A 2018 MacArthur Fellow, he is Board of Governors Professor and has served as department chair and program director at Rutgers University-Newark.