Bio

Jen wanted to be a writer before she could read. She remembers memorizing books read to her by her mother and then pretending she could read them as she thumbed through the pages. Her other early passions were archaeology and marine biology, two fields that have played out in her life as a writer dedicated to excavating the truth in an attempt to remember how to live a sacred life, and in her love for the sea. 

​

She graduated from The Bread Loaf School of English with an MA in English Literature and was a work-study scholar at The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Accolades include being nominated for The Pushcart Prize by The Beloit Poetry Journal and for Best New American Poets by the journal Thrush. She received the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Merit Award for Poetry in 2014. Her poems, stories and essays have appeared in numerous journals including Earthlines, Bamboo Ridge, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner and Verse Daily.

​

Finishing Line Press published her chapbook, "Breaking Up With The Moon" in 2017. It is currently available on Amazon. Her new book, "Piko: A Return To The Dreaming," a nonfiction account of a twenty-one day ceremony she enacted in the Pu'uonua o Honaunau, the Place of Refuge, on the Big Island, is forthcoming.