John Yau is an art critic, essayist, poet, and prose writer. He was born in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1950, shortly after his parents fled Shanghai. He received his B.A. from Bard College in 1972 and his M.F.A. from Brooklyn College in 1978. His collections of poetry include Borrowed Love Poems (Penguin, 2002), Forbidden Entries (1996), Berlin Diptychon (1995), Edificio Sayonara (1992), and Corpse and Mirror (1983), a National Poetry Series book selected by John Ashbery. His books of art criticism include The United States of Jasper Johns (1996) and In the Realm of Appearances: The Art of Andy Warhol (1993). He has also edited Fetish (1998), a fiction anthology.

Yau's honors include the Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Jerome Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the General Electric Foundation. He currently teaches at the Maryland Institute, College of Art. Yau lives in New York City.