Dr. Kerr is a “Native Californian.” He grew up in the Bay Area, attended the University of California at Berkeley for his undergraduate degree in English Literature, studied literature and religion at The Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and, most recently, studied American Literature and Modernist Poetry for his Ph.D. at Stanford University.

Dr. Kerr has a keen view for the cultures of East Asia, partly because he taught English in Japan and partly because he loves how Asia has been such a strong presence in the literature and art of the United States. Did you know that the climax of Moby Dick occurs in the Pacific Ocean not far from Japan?

Relaxation for Dr. Kerr is hanging out with his family, while his keenest literary passion is for poetry and poetics, especially if he is backpacking at 10,000 feet in California’s High Sierra Mountains.