Jianqing Zheng is the author of The Dog Years of Reeducation, A Way of Looking and two poetry chapbooks, editor of Conversations with Dana Gioia, Sonia Sanchez's Poetic Spirit through Haiku, and five other books. He received the 2019 Gerald Cable Book Prize and two literary arts fellowships from the Mississippi Arts Commission, among other awards and honors. He is professor of English at Mississippi Valley State University, where he serves as editor of the Journal of Ethnic American Literature and Valley Voices and is the former editor of Poetry South. Zheng has lived in Mississippi since 1991.