Jake Adam York authored four books of poems: Murder Ballads (Elixir Press, 2005); A Murmuration of Starlings (Southern Illinois UP, 2008); Persons Unknown (Southern Illinois UP, 2010); and Abide, which will be published posthumously by Southern Illinois University Press in 2014. Originally from Alabama, he was educated at Auburn and Cornell. He received fellowships to serve as a Poet in Residence at the University of Mississippi (2009), to serve as the Thomas Visiting Professor in Creative Writing at Kenyon College (2011), and from the Mellon Foundation to serve as a Visiting Faculty Fellow at the James Weldon Johnson Institute for Advanced Study at Emory University (2011-2012). He was an associate professor of English at the University of Colorado Denver and edited the journal Copper Nickel.