Jay Caspian Kang

Jay Caspian Kang is an American writer and editor, most known for his sports articles for Grantland, for which he worked as an editor until December 2013.

He is a correspondent on Vice News Tonight and a writer-at-large at the New York Times Magazine and has served as the science and technology editor for The New Yorker's Elements blog (from April to November 2014). His debut novel, The Dead Do Not Improve was released by Hogarth/Random House in the summer of 2012.

Kang was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in Boston and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He graduated from Bowdoin College. At Bowdoin, he was awarded the prestigious 2003 Sinkinson Prize for Best Short Story and founded ritalin magazine. He received his Masters of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University in 2005.

After receiving his MFA, Kang spent a number of years in San Francisco and Los Angeles teaching creative writing and world history.

His journalism has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Wired, The Morning News, Deadspin, The Awl, and The Atlantic.com and many of his sports articles have appeared in Bill Simmons' Grantland. Among his more notable sports articles for Grantland are his articles covering Jeremy Lin. His notable articles on Lin include "A Question of Identity", "The Uncertain Future of Linsanity" and "Dumb Move, Dolan." He has also written an article about Ichiro Suzuki titled "Immigrant Misappropriations: The Importance of Ichiro" and about Kareem Abdul-Jabbartitled "What the World Got Wrong About Kareem Abdul-Jabbar."

Kang's debut novel, The Dead Do Not Improve was released in 2012 by Hogarth/Random House. The book was summarized by the Kirkus Book Reviews as a "Pynchon-esque menagerie of California surfers, cops, thugs and dot-com workers [that] converge in a comic anti-noir." The book revolves around a disgruntled MFA graduate named Philip Kim, who discovers that his elderly neighbor has been murdered, and who soon becomes the unlikely protagonist of a quickly unfolding mystery. Kang mentioned that he wanted to write the book about Korean American male anger and reflect on how the Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, was also Korean.

Kang joined Vice in June 2016 as civil rights correspondent, appearing on HBO's "Vice News Tonight". He is also a writer-at-large for The New York Times Magazine. Previously he was a founding editor of the ESPN sports and pop-culture blog Grantland, and then served as editor of the science and technology blog Elements at The New Yorker from April to November 2014.

Kang is a thyroid cancer survivor. He has remarked that "Surviving cancer can cleanse the soul, sure, but once you're left facing the rest of your life, a patient's vision can tunnel down to a list of demands."

He is married and currently lives in New York. He has a daughter who was born in January 2017.