About

Jennifer Oakes (formerly Jennifer Boyden) is a poet and novelist. Her latest book of poems, We Can't Tell If the Constellations Love Us, won the 42 Miles Poetry Prize. Earlier works (published under the name Jennifer Boyden) include her novel, The Chief of Rally Tree, which was awarded the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature (Skyhorse Publishing), and two books of poems: The Declarable Future and The Mouths of Grazing Things (University of Wisconsin Press). Her work can be found in numerous journals and anthologies. 

Jennifer is a former PEN Northwest Wilderness Writing Resident, a residency which invites one writer per year to live in an off-grid cabin for a year in a remote region in southern Oregon. While there, Jennifer made friends with trees and boulders, kept her dogs away from cougars, and figured out how time works.

Jennifer serves on the faculty of Eastside Preparatory School (where each of her students is her favorite student) and is a contributing editor for Solstice Literary Magazine. She lives in Seattle.