Tyehimba Jess

Tyehimba Jess is an American poet born in 1965 in Detroit, Michigan. He received his B.A. from the University of Chicago and his M.F.A. from New York University. He is a professor of English at The College of Staten Island. His collection Olio (2016) won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The collection tells the story of ragtime and early jazz musicians from the turn of the twentieth century — particularly Scott Joplin's musicians — using an innovative form called the 'contrapuntal sonnet' that can be read in multiple directions, mirroring the syncopated rhythms of the music it describes. Jess's debut collection leadbelly (2005) won the National Poetry Series. He has received a Lannan Literary Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is considered a significant formal innovator in contemporary American poetry.