September 2026: Anthony Tao

We're delighted to be featuring the American Chinese poet Anthony Tao this month.

Anthony Tao was born in Beijing, grew up in Overland Park, Kansas, USA, and graduated with a journalism degree from Northwestern University. He returned to Beijing in 2008 to cover the Olympics for ESPN The Magazine, and then stayed. He has worked an assortment of editing and writing jobs, captained and coached Ultimate Frisbee teams, coordinated the Bookworm International Literary Festival, owned a hutong bar, and hosted events ranging from World Cup-style beer pong to monthly poetry readings for the Spittoon Literary Arts Collective. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Prairie Schooner, NPR, Frontier, The Portland Review, etc. He is a founding member, with Liane Halton, of Poetry x Music Band and is the author of the poetry anthology We Met in Beijing.

Anthony writes mainly English language poetry about the city he now lives in, Beijing. He has kindly curated a selection of his poetry for us to read this month.

Read more about a project Anthony does with the classical guitarist Liane Halton, at poetryxmusic. Their third album has just been released to Bandcamp, and they will be presenting this album at the Ubud Writers Festival and George Town Literary Festival in the autumn.

You can also follow Anthony's thoughts on poetry on Substack or Instagram.

We were fortunate to have Anthony join us in Leeds in September this year, where he read from his latest collection of poetry, Beijing Beauty (2026) and discussed the contemporary poetry scene in Beijing, among other topics.