Jan-Henry Gray was born in the Philippines, grew up in California, and worked as a chef in San Francisco for more than 12 years. He lived undocumented in the US for more than 32 years. A graduate of San Francisco State University and Columbia College Chicago’s MFA program, he received the inaugural Undocupoets Fellowship and awards from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and the Academy of American Poets. 


Gray’s first full-length book, Documents, was chosen by D.A. Powell as the winner of BOA Editions’ 2018 Poulin Poetry Prize. He is also the author of the chapbook Selected Emails from speCt! Books. His writing can be found in Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color, the Rumpus, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Fourteen Hills, The Margins, Quarterly West, Puerto del Sol, and other journals. 

Gray is a Kundiman fellow and a visiting assistant professor at Adelphi University. He lives in Brooklyn.