Jay Gao is a Chinese Scottish poet and writer from Edinburgh, based in New York City.
[2] Between 2017 and 2022, Gao began publishing under the name Jay G Ying, publishing two poetry pamphlets during this time: Wedding Beasts (2019), shortlisted for the 2019 Callum MacDonald Memorial Award;[3] and Katabasis (2020), winner of the 2019 New Poets Prize, judged by Mary Jean Chan.
[4] In 2018, Gao co-founded the Scottish BPOC Writers Network with Alycia Pirmohamed as an "advocacy and professional development group for Scottish and Scotland-based writers and literary professionals who identify as BPOC (Black people, People of Colour)".
[5] In 2019, Gao participated in the Palestine Festival of Literature as a visiting author, alongside writers including Victoria Adukwei Bulley and Natalie Diaz.
[6] In 2020, Gao was part of a delegation for the 35th British Council Literature Seminar in Hamburg, in collaboration with Literaturhaus Hamburg, in order to promote new Scottish literature and voices alongside Louise Welsh, Mary Paulson-Ellis, Malachy Tallack, and Kirsty Logan.