James Shea (MFA, University of Iowa; BA summa cum laude, Loyola University Chicago) is the author of Last Day of My Face (University of Iowa Press, 2025), selected by Brenda Shaughnessy for the Iowa Poetry Prize. His other poetry collections include The Lost Novel (Fence Books), Star in the Eye (Fence Books), and the chapbook Air and Water Show (Convulsive Editions). The Lost Novel was named as a “Book of 2015” by The Volta. Star in the Eye was chosen by Nick Flynn for the Fence Modern Poets Series and selected by Sarah Gridley for the Poetry Society of America’s New American Poets Series.

His poems have appeared in various publications, including A Public Space, Bennington Review, Conduit, Denver Quarterly, Fence, and The New Census: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. His translations of Japanese and Chinese poetry have appeared in Brick: A Literary Journal, Chinese Literature Today, Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. He is the co-translator with Dorothy Tse of Moving a Stone: Selected Poems of Yam Gong (Zephyr Press, 2022). With Ikuho Amano, he co-translated the essay “Haiku on Shit” by Masaoka Shiki, which appeared in Poetry magazine. He is also the co-editor with Grant Caldwell of The Routledge Global Haiku Reader and the translator of Applause for a Cloud, a collection of haiku by the Japanese poet Sayumi Kamakura (Black Ocean, 2025).

Formerly an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Nebraska Wesleyan University, he received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant for Hong Kong, where he taught for the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing from 2013-2014. He has also taught for the University of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago’s MFA Program in Poetry, DePaul University, and as a poet-in-residence in the Chicago public schools, where he received The Poetry Center of Chicago’s Gwendolyn Brooks Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has received grants for his work from various organizations, including the National Endowment for the Arts, Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and the Vermont Arts Council.

In 2025, he was a Department Associate in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases in the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. He is also the Poetry Reviews Editor for the Hong Kong Review of Books and an advisor to the Hong Kong International Literary Festival.

Grants (Selected)

Externally-funded Grants

General Research Fund, University Grants Committee (HK): “In Extremis: Practice-Based Research on Engaging the Climate Crisis with Constraint-based Poetry” (380,417 HKD, approximately 49,000 USD) (2026-2028)

Hong Kong Arts Development Council Cultural Exchange Grant: “Featuring Yam Gong’s Poetry at American Universities” (111,400 HKD, approximately 14,000 USD) (2025)

Hong Kong Arts Development Council Grant in Literary Arts Publication (HK): “Moving a Stone: Selected Poems of Yam Gong” (24,000 HKD, approximately $3,000 USD) (2022)

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Literature Fellowship for Translation (USA): “Moving a Stone’: Selected Poems of Yam Gong” ($12,500 USD) (2020)

General Research Fund, University Grants Committee (HK): “Creative Writing Pedagogy during the Cold War: The University of Iowa’s International Writing Program and Hong Kong Poets” (281,000 HKD, approximately $35,000 USD) (2019-2021)

Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant (USA) ($4,000 USD) (2019)

Hong Kong Arts Development Council Grant in Literary Translation (HK): “‘And So Moving a Stone’: Translating Yam Gong’s Poetry.” (50,000 HKD, approximately $6,400 USD) (2018)

Fulbright Scholar Grant, U.S. Department of State ($50,000 USD) (2013-2014)

East Asia and the Pacific Regional Travel Grant for U.S. Fulbright Grantees (2013; 2014)

Japanese Ministry of Education Research Fellowship, Utsunomiya University (2001-2003)

Internally-funded Grants

Faculty Research Grant, Hong Kong Baptist University: “From Iowa City to Kowloon City: Tracing the University of Iowa’s Influence on Hong Kong Writers during the Cold War” (50,000 HKD, approximately $6,400 USD) (2017)

Faculty Research Grant, Hong Kong Baptist University: “Understanding Creative Writing as an Academic Discipline in Hong Kong: A Pilot Study” (50,000 HKD, approximately $6,400 USD) (2015)

Externally-funded Grants Related to Service

Co-Supervisor with Mr. Nicholas Wong, “Writing-Plus: Using Creative Writing Pedagogy to Enhance Teaching Development,” Teaching Development Grant (395,500 HKD, approximately $50,000 USD), Education University of Hong Kong (20202-2021)

Lead author, Tin Ka Ping Foundation grant (760,000 HKD) matched by HK Government for a total of 1,520,000 HKD (approximately $200,000 USD) over 4 years for the Chinese Writers’ Workshop (2019)

Lead author, U.S. Consulate of Hong Kong & Macau grant (32,000 HKD, approximately $4,000 USD) for International Writers’ Workshop (2018)

Hong Kong Poetry Festival Foundation donations for HKBU Century Club Citywide English Poetry Competition (10,000 HKD for 2021; 10,000 HKD for 2020; and 6,500 HKD for 2019 for a total of 26,500 HKD, approximately $3,400 USD)

Publications (Selected)

Books

Last Day of My Face. Winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize judged by Brenda Shaughnessy. University of Iowa Press, 2025.

Applause for a Cloud. Translations of haiku by Sayumi Kamakura. Black Ocean, 2025.

The Routledge Global Haiku Reader. Co-edited with Grant Caldwell (University of Melbourne). Routledge, 2023.

Moving a Stone: Selected Poems of Yam Gong. Co-translated with Dorothy Tse (HKBU). Zephyr Press, 2022.

The Lost Novel. Fence Books, 2014. Collection of poetry.

Star in the Eye. Fence Books, 2008; reprinted in 2017. Collection of poetry.

Poems

“Father to Be,” “Immobile Sun, Immobile Moon.” Conduit (forthcoming 2025).

“Extraordinary Means.” Fence (forthcoming 2024)

“Voyage.” A Public Space (forthcoming 2024).

“The Womb I Knew,” Notre Dame Review 55 (Winter/Spring 2023): 52-53.

“A Void’s Void,” Mississippi Review Vol. 49, Issue 3 (Winter 2022). 37.

“Two-Body Problem” and “Wake,” Bennington Review (2019). 3-4.

Peer-Reviewed Academic Journal Publications

“Self-Domestication: Wan Kin-lau’s Self-Translations at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop,” Babel: International Journal of Translation 70, no. 4 (2024): 554–574.

“Co-opting the International Writing Program during the Cold War: Gu Cangwu, the Baodiao Movement, and Minjian Activism,” Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, Vol. 17, No. 1, Duke University Press (2020). 79-103. 

“From Iowa City to Kowloon Tong: On the Cold War Origins of Creative Writing Pedagogy in Hong Kong.” Writing in Practice: The Journal of Creative Writing Research, Vol. 5, National Association of Writers in Education (UK). (March 2019).

“Teaching Chinese-language Creative Writing in Hong Kong’s Tertiary Institutions: Three Case Studies.” TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses: Special Issue No 47 Ideas and realities: Creative writing in Asia today (November 2017). 1-13.

Book Chapters

“‘Radical’ Translation: Teaching Poetry Writing in Hong Kong,” The Rise of Creative Writing in English in Asia (Routledge, 2021). pp. 116-128.

“Oulipo in Hong Kong: Welcoming Unconventional Forms in Multilingual Poetry Writing Workshops.” Poetry in Pedagogy: Intersections Across and Between the Disciplines (Routledge, 2021). 27-43.

“Teaching Chinese-language Creative Writing in Hong Kong’s Tertiary Institutions: Three Case Studies.” Reprinted in The Place and the Writer: International Intersections of Teacher Lore and Creative Writing Pedagogy (Bloomsbury, 2021) 185-200.

“Poetry Writing Workshops, or: The Conversation between Thoughts and Feelings.” Innocence and Dreams: Essays on Teaching Creative Writing [童心與夢：文學創作教學論集]. (Hong Kong: Department of Chinese Language and Literature, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2017). 143-156.