Anthologies
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| American Journal | 2018 | Buy |
| They Said | 2018 | Buy |
| Breaking into Blossom: Poems with Extraordinary Endings | 2025 | Buy |
Collections
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Against Which | 2006 | Buy |
| Bringing the Shovel Down | 2011 | Buy |
| Lace & Pyrite | 2014 | Buy |
| Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude | 2015 | Buy |
| The Book of Delights | 2019 | Buy |
| Be Holding | 2020 | Buy |
| Inciting Joy | 2022 | Buy |
| The Book of More Delights | 2023 | Buy |
Ross Gay was born in 1974 and holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and a PhD from Temple University. He teaches creative writing at Indiana University Bloomington, where he is also involved in the Bloomington Community Orchard, a free-fruit project that reflects the community-minded ethos running through much of his writing. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
His debut collection, Against Which (2006), appeared from CavanKerry Press, followed by Bringing the Shovel Down (2011) from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (2015) brought wide recognition: it won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. The long, generous poems in that collection — spiraling praise-songs for the particular things of a life — established the voice he would carry into his essay work.
The Book of Delights (2019) became a New York Times bestseller, expanding his audience beyond poetry readers with a year’s worth of short essays written as a daily practice. Inciting Joy (2022) and The Book of More Delights (2023) extended the essay work, while Be Holding (2020) returned to the book-length poem to explore Julius Erving’s legendary 1980 NBA Finals layup as a meditation on beauty and witnessing.