Jackie Craven is the author of Secret Formulas & Techniques of the Masters (Brick Road Poetry Press), Cyborg Sister (Headmistress Press), and Our Lives Became Unmanageable (Omnidawn), winner of Omnidawn’s Fabulist Fiction Award.
Her poetry has appeared in AGNI Journal, The Massachusetts Review, New Ohio Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Poet Lore, River Styx, Salamander, Spillway, and other journals and anthologies. She worked for many years as a journalist covering architecture, design, and cultural travel.
Publications
Interviews
- 10 Questions for Jackie Craven (The Massachusetts Review)
- Q & A with Jackie Craven
- Interview with Jackie Craven (R.kv.r.y Quarterly Literary Journal)
Watch & Listen
Academic Life
Jackie graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University and earned a Doctor of Arts in Writing from the University at Albany, New York. She received fellowships from the New York State Writers Institute and other workshop programs. A number of leading writers provided guidance and instruction, and she’s especially grateful to Ellen Bass, Frank Bidart, Henri Cole, Barry Goldensohn, Andrea Hollander, Ilya Kaminsky, James Lasdun, Thomas Lux, Bernadette Mayer, Marge Piercy, Tim Seibles, and Barbara Louise Ungar. Jackie’s teaching background includes stints as a high school reading specialist, a distance learning instructor, and an English instructor for the University at Albany, Russell Sage, Schenectady County Community College, and Hudson Valley Community College.
Personal Life
Jackie Craven grew up in a family of magical realists. Her mother and sister were painters who filled their northern Virginia home with the scent of turpentine. Jackie’s father, a no-nonsense aviation engineer, moved away, but she was blessed with an affable stepfather who shared her love for tall tales. After college, she moved to upstate New York where she taught English, wrote travel articles, and tried to repair her run-down house. Old buildings can be irresistible, and Jackie adopted several dilapidated Victorians on her street. She left her teaching job and, with a partner and several helpers, set up a small but chaotic business restoring and renting out Victorian apartments. Poetry came late in life, after her parents and her business partner died. Jackie sold the rental properties and began to follow her literary dreams.
Much of Jackie’s writing draws inspiration from her mother’s art. She works at a cluttered desk in front of her mother’s painting of a juggler, a monkey, and a davenport drifting in mid-air.
Connect
- Facebook: WriterJackieCraven
- Instagram: JackieCrave
- Pinterest: JackieCraven02
- Goodreads: JackieCraven
- Linkedin: Jackie-Craven
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