Jenny Factor
Biography
Jenny Factor is a poet and scholar. Author of two collections of poetry notable for formal verse
and word play, Want, the Lake (Red Hen Press, 2024) and Unraveling at the Name
(Copper Canyon, 2002), Factor was also a finalist for the 2011 Anna Davidson
Rosenberg Award for Poems on the Jewish Experience. Her first collection, Unraveling
at the Name (Copper Canyon Press, 2002) won the Hayden Carruth Award and was a
finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQIA poetry. Her poetry has appeared in the
Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Poetry 180 (Scribner), California Poets
from the Gold Rush to the Present, and the Best American Erotic Poems. A former core faculty member at Antioch University Los Angeles, an MFA program focused on literature and social justice, Factor is near completion of a doctorate on New England women’s poetry circulation networks and the craft of Phillis Wheatley Peters, while serving as a Lecturer in Poetry at Caltech each spring.
Want, the Lake, Factor’s newest collection, brings the poetic essay form central to
Yehuda Amichai’s Open, Closed, Open into dialogue with contemporary motherhood,
psychoanalysis, and philosophy, drawing inspiration from Aviva Zornberg and Alicia
Ostriker.
Published Works
Want, the Lake: Poems (Red Hen Press, 2024)
Unraveling at the Name: Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2002)
Essays and poems appear in GenderQueer (Rare Bird), Poetry 180 (Scribner),
and The Best American Erotic Poetry (Scribner)
Author Site
Links to Sample Works
1. Academy of American Poets, “Battle of Will & Exhaustion, Mother & Child”
2. The Paris Review, “To Twenty Geese in the Palisades Industrial Park”
3. Verse Daily, “She Said to Me”
Video Reading
Current Title
Education
AB Harvard College
MFA Bennington College
MA Brandeis University
ABD Brandeis University