Biography

Jennifer Kwon Dobbs was born in Won Ju Si, South Korea. Her debut collection, Paper Pavilion, received the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and was published in 2007. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 5 AM,Blackbird, Cadences, Crazyhorse, Cimarron Review, Cream City Review, MiPOesias, Poetry NZ, Tulane Review, among other journals; have been anthologized in Echoes Upon Echoes (Asian American Writers Workshop 2003) and Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (W. W. Norton 2008); featured on radio and in film; and translated into Greek, Korean, and Turkish.

Her music collaboration, "Among Joshua Trees," with Steven Gates won the New York Youth Symphony´s First Music Series and debuted at Carnegie Hall. She is also the librettist for Anemone, a chamber opera about Korean comfort women, composed by Charles Ilwoo Lee and performed in Los Angeles. Other poetry/song collaborations include "Four Winter Nocturnes" with Thomas Osborne and "This Lonely Life" with Matthew Brown.

She holds a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. As a fellow, she served as founding director of the SummerTIME Writing Program, a college access program for Los Angeles inner-city high school students, sponsored by The Rossier School of Education´s Center for Higher Education and Policy Analysis.

Currently, she is assistant professor of creative writing at St. Olaf College and lives in Minneapolis.