Jacques J. Rancourt was born in Maine and spent his formative years in an off-the-grid cabin near the mouth of the 100-mile wilderness, the Appalachian Trail’s northern terminus. He attended the University of Maine at Farmington and earned his M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

His first full-length collection, Novena, selected by Hadara Bar-Nadav, won the Lena-Miles Wever Todd prize and was published in 2017 by Pleiades Press. A chapbook of poems, In the Time of PrEP, was published the following year as the inaugural title in the Chad Walsh chapbook series from the Beloit Poetry Journal. His second full-length collection, Brocken Spectre, an editor’s choice selection for the Alice James Award and shortlisted for the Julie Suk Award, was published in 2021.  

Rancourt has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and Stanford University where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. Additionally, he has been the recipient of residencies from the Cité Internationale des Arts, Monson Arts, and Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, as well as scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences. 

He has recently published individual poems in magazines such as AGNI, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, New Republic, POETRY Magazine, and elsewhere. His work has been featured in Poetry Daily, From the Fishouse, and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as in the Best of the Net and Best New Poets anthologies.

He has taught creative writing courses at the university level, served as an undergraduate thesis advisor, and worked as a middle school principal, guidance counselor, and English teacher. Additionally, he has led workshops for prison inmates, underserved youth at Upward Bound, and summer high school students at Stanford, Duke, and Northwestern Universities, as well as overseas in Thailand. (He also canvassed as a regional organizer for the Maine marriage equality and Scott Walker recall campaigns, made latte hearts as a barista, flipped burgers at Wendy’s, and faced his lobsterphobia at a seafood deli).

He now lives and teaches in San Francisco, California.