PUBLISHED WORK
Words for the parts of life that are hard to name.
Poetry has long been part of how I make sense of lived experience, hold what is complicated, and create meaning where easy answers fall short.
Across five poetry collections, anthology work, and decades of publication in literary journals, my writing explores the human experience through language that is personal, honest, and unafraid to sit with complexity.
Poetry Collections
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Her Believing Heart
2025 · Sligo Creek Publishing
Her Believing Heart ventures into the parts of human experience that are often left unexplored. Through radical acceptance, reclamation, and complete transparency, Jennifer traces a journey in which relationships, body, mind, and spirit gradually condense into a deeper understanding of self.
Transformation here is not gentle or uncomplicated. Like river rocks polished through friction, the poems consider how boundaries, impact, and difficult experiences can reshape us into something newly formed.
2026 CLMP Firecracker Award nominee
“My Offer” nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry
Women, Wounds and Kitchens
2002 · Kitty Litter Press
*not available for purchase
Published in 2002, Women, Wounds and Kitchens is one of Jennifer’s earlier poetry collections and part of a body of literary work spanning more than two decades.
Balloons…and Other Things That Float
2018 · The Poet’s Haven
Place, memory, and choice move through Balloons…and Other Things That Float like water.
Growing up near the Potomac River, Jennifer was surrounded by roads, bridges, boundaries, and the question of whether to cross them. Years after leaving, she discovered that those landscapes continued to shape the way she understood change, belonging, and the choices that carry us from one version of ourselves into another.
With wit, reflection, and a recurring pull toward the natural world, the collection considers what we leave, what follows us, and what becomes visible when the waters recede.
“Almost Spring” nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry
Borderlines
2000 · Kitty Litter Press
*not available for purchase
Originally published in 2000, Borderlines was Jennifer’s first poetry collection and received a second printing in 2002.
Women Dancing
2014 · The Poet’s Haven
Women Dancing looks closely at family, domestic life, and the ordinary details through which identity quietly reveals itself.
Jennifer approaches both experience and poetic form with curiosity and precision, using acrostics, haiku, and other forms to look again at moments that might otherwise pass unnoticed.
The result is a collection interested in what happens when we pay meaningful attention to everyday life, and perhaps allow ourselves, for a moment, to fall upward toward something unexpected.
“Residue of Dreams” nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry
Edited Work
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Bearing Witness: Poems for Troubled Times
2026 · Sligo Creek Publishing
Editor
Jennifer served as editor of Bearing Witness: Poems for Troubled Times, published by Sligo Creek Publishing in January 2026.
Beyond the Collections
A writing life measured in decades.
Jennifer’s poetry and creative work have appeared in literary journals and anthologies dating back to the early 1990s.
Her publishing history includes work in Connections Literary Magazine, Voices Israel Anthology, The Awakenings Review, Insight, The Reflector, Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, Literary Lunch, Wild Onions Literary Magazine, and Mindprints Literary Journal.
Her relationship with Connections Literary Magazine spans from 1993 to the present.
Literary Recognition
Work that has found its way beyond the page.
Jennifer’s writing has received recognition throughout her career, including three Pushcart Prize nominations:
“My Offer”
Her Believing Heart
2026 Pushcart Prize nomination
“Almost Spring”
Balloons…and Other Things That Float
2018 Pushcart Prize nomination
“Residue of Dreams”
Women Dancing
2014 Pushcart Prize nomination
Additional recognition includes the 2026 CLMP Firecracker Award nomination for Her Believing Heart, third prize in the Doctors Kienle Competition in Literature for “In the Flesh,” the Michael L. Johnson Writing Excellence Award, and a residency at the St. Mary’s College Poet’s and Writer’s Festival.