He graduated from Kansas State University, and from the University of Montana, with an MFA.He worked at the New Orleans Museum of Art and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.He taught at Tulane University, and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.He lived in southern California, where he was chair of creative writing at Idyllwild Arts Academy.He was writer-in-residence at the Hugo House.He is the Jennie McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington Fellow at George Washington University.He lives in Seattle and Washington, D.C.

His poems have been published in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, and The Paris Review.

The phrase "Mister Skylight" is an emergency signal to alert a ship's crew, but not its passengers, of the emergency. Skoog's debut collection, Mister Skylight (Copper Canyon Press, 2009), is an alert to disasters and to the hope of rescue. Interior dramas of the self play out in a clash of poetric traditions, exuberant imagery, and wild metaphor.

• "Autobiographical", Slate, May 19, 1999
• "Bela", Blackbird, Spring 2006
• "West Coast", Narrative, Summer 2009
• "Little Song", Narrative
• "Like Night Catching Jackrabbits in Its Barbed Wire", American Poetry Review, Vol. 37 No. 2