Major Jackson is the author of six volumes of poetry. His honors include a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. The poetry editor of the Harvard Review and the host of the podcast The Slowdown, Jackson lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

"[Hoops] is a layered metaphor, implying, among other things, basketball, jewelry, and life's hurdles... Witty, musical, and intelligent; [Jackson] is equally happy discussing the war on terror... or describing early crushes." The New Yorker"