Jen Fitzgerald

Jen Fitzgerald is a writer, poet, and photographer from Staten Island. She received her MFA in poetry from Lesley University and her BA in writing from The College of Staten Island. Her essays, poetry, and photography has been featured widely in such venues as PBS Newshour, Tin House, Boston Review, NER, Colorado Review, The Nation, and Salon, among others. Her first collection of poetry, The Art of Work was published by Noemi Press in 2016. As a community activist, she has created spaces for the literary community to organize outside of academia, working in tandem with the National Writer’s Union to organize at AWP, hosting podcasts and readings, and laboring around issues of representation in publishing as Count Director for The VIDA Count. She teaches writing and literacy workshops to incarcerated youth and adults on Rikers Island and in other jails/institutions around NYC. Her new work interrogates language as a means to bridge gaps in interpersonal connection while engaging larger concepts of solidarity, singularity, and ascension.