He holds a Ph.D. in East Asian Studies from Princeton University and a Master of Fine Arts in poetry writing from Washington University in St. Louis. His first scholarly monograph is called Recite and Refuse: Contemporary Chinese Prose Poetry (University of Hawaii Press, 2016), and he is the author of essays including “The Poetics of Hinting in Lu Xun’s ‘Wild Grass’,” “Six Proposals for the Reform of Literature in the Age of Climate Change,” and “The Language of Violence.” He has translated poetry and prose by Liu Xiaobo, Lu Xun, and Genzi, and his translations of contemporary poetry were awarded a 2017 PEN-Heim translation grant.