Yuki Tanaka was born and raised on a small island in Yamaguchi, Japan. His poems have appeared in the Nation, the New Republic, the Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. He has also co-translated, with Mary Jo Bang, A Kiss for the Absolute: Selected Poems of Shuzo Takiguchi, published by Princeton University Press. He received an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD in English from Washington University in St. Louis. He lives in Tokyo and teaches at Hosei University.