Chiasson was born in
Burlington, Vermont. He grew up in the city of Burlington as the only child of his single mother. He attended Catholic schools, Mater Christi School and
Rice Memorial High School, from which he graduated in 1989. He graduated
summa cum laude in Classics and English from
Amherst College (1993), and from
Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D. in English and was awarded the
Whiting Foundation Award in the Humanities. In addition to teaching at Wellesley, Chiasson has been affiliated with
Boston University's Master of Fine Arts program, with
NYU's program in Paris, France, and with the Middlebury College
Bread Loaf Environmental Conference in Ripton, Vermont. He was a 2017 James Merrill House Fellow in Stonington, CT. He lives in
Wellesley, Massachusetts, with his wife and two sons. Chiasson is a longtime contributor to
The New Yorker and
The New York Review of Books. He was the poetry editor (with
Meghan O'Rourke), and later advisory editor, of the
Paris Review. His poems have been translated into many languages, including German by
Jan Wagner. His
Natural History was published as
Naturgeschichte at Luxbooks, a publishing house focused on American poetry in bilingual editions. In the UK, he is published by
Bloodaxe Books. He is on the editorial board of the literary magazine
The Common, based at Amherst College. ==Honors and awards==