Jennifer Blackburn

Jennifer Blackburn is the Program & Outreach coordinator for the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College, where she works to support and develop poetry initiatives across the college and in the wider community of Western MA. Recent initiatives have included the Blackout Poetry Project with Design Thinking Initiative; an annual field trip to bring high school students to campus to experience a poetry reading with a nationally-recognized poet; and work with Sylvia Plath’s drafts in collaborations with Special Collections and the Imaging Center. You can find her writing (as Jen Jabaily-Blackburn) in SIR, Arkansas International, Palette Poetry, Salamander, Fugue, Banshee, On the Seawall and Couplet Poetry, and her poems have twice been included in Best New Poets. Her first book of poems, Girl in a Bear Suit, the winner of the 2023 Elixir Press Annual Poetry Prize, is forthcoming in 2024.