Jessica Jacobs is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books, 2019), named one of Library Journal‘s Best Poetry Books of the year, winner of the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award from Southern Illinois University and the Goldie Award from the Golden Crown Literary Society, and a finalist for the Brockman-Campbell, American Fiction, and Julie Suk Book Awards. Her debut collection, Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press, 2015), a biography-in-poems of Georgia O’Keeffe, won the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her chapbook In Whatever Light Left to Us was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2016. Her poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in publications including Crazyhorse, The Missouri Review, New England Review, Orion, and Guernica. An avid long-distance runner, Jessica has worked as a rock climbing instructor, bartender, editor, and professor, and is now the Associate Editor of Beloit Poetry Journal. She lives with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown in Asheville, North Carolina, with whom she recently published the book, Write it! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire (Spruce Books, 2020).
Jessica Jacobs
This Year's Festival Lineup includes:
Together we’ll work on your poems inside and out, in our hands-on line-by-line discussion of three poems by each participant. To shape our conversation and study, submit two one-page poems and be ready to write a ... Read more >
The focus of this workshop will be on revision: how can we acquire the tools we need to revise our poems on our own? Many aspiring and even experienced poets find it challenging to revise ... Read more >
Every writer has their strengths, but we often tend to over-rely on what we already know we do well. In this workshop, we will focus on how to create a balance of tension in poems. ... Read more >
This workshop will focus on the revision process. We’ll discuss various revision strategies that will help us tighten our poems, but also explore revision as a process that allows us to imagine other possibilities for ... Read more >
In this workshop we will explore how poems need not end with an ascendant or descendent gesture to be as haunting and powerful as a poem that affirms the human condition and assures us that ... Read more >
All poetry is conventional and all convention exists in public spaces and in history. This workshop will take these truths to be fundamental to free verse poetry and, drawing from them, will examine the various ... Read more >
Participants will discuss how the poet is handling content – the decisions that have been made in terms of diction, form, pacing, syntax, etc. with a mind to coming up with useful ideas for revision. ... Read more >
In this generative workshop, we will be writing and revising poems of delight, celebration, and grief, paying special attention to tone of voice. Tone is often defined as an author’s attitude toward her subject, but ... Read more >
This year’s Thomas Lux Memorial Reading and Special Interview Event will feature a one-on-one interview of Gregory Orr by Laure-Anne Bosselaar to be followed by a Q&A session with the poet on Tuesday, ... Read more >
Descriptions of 2021 Poet-at-Large Brian Turner’s virtual high school performances and a special evening event with this distinguished poet are forthcoming. Read more >