Poetry Path: Jenny Xie

Jenny Xie was born in Hefei, China, and spent her early years in New Jersey. She holds an MFA from New York University and has taught at both NYU and Princeton University. Her most recent collection, Eye Level (Graywolf Press, 2018), was the recipient of the 2017 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and the 2018 Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University, and a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry and the 2019 PEN Open Book Award. Xie is a 2018 Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow and 2020 winner of the Vilcek Prize in Creative Promise.

Photo by Daniel Terna

Jenny Xie, excerpt from “Chinatown Diptych” from Eye Level. Copyright © 2018 by Jennie Xie. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

The Poetry Path is made possible through a partnership with Battery Park City Authority, partners in design and fabrication of the Poetry Path, with additional support from our Outreach Partner, Goldman Sachs. Special thanks to the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Foundation for funding the Poetry Path planning process, and to the Marcia Brady Tucker Foundation for supporting Poetry Path educational initiatives for youth and children.