Photo credit: Zoe Cross

Jen Karetnick

b. 1968

Current City, State, Country

El Portal, Florida, USA

Birth City, State, Country

United States

Biography

Jen Karetnick’s fourth full-length book is the 2021 CIPA EVVY Gold Medal winner The Burning Where Breath Used to Be (David Robert Books, 2020). Forthcoming books include the chapbook What Forges Us Steel: The Judge Judy Poems (Alternating Currents Press). Her work has won the Tiferet Writing Contest for Poetry, Split Rock Review Chapbook Competition, Hart Crane Memorial Prize, and Anna Davidson Rosenberg Prize, among other honors, and received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Artists in Residence in the Everglades, the Deering Estate, Maryland Transit Administration, and elsewhere. The co-founder and managing editor of SWWIM Every Day, she has recent or forthcoming work in American Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, Cutthroat, DIAGRAM, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, The Penn Review, Ruminate, Tar River Poetry, Terrain.org, and elsewhere.  Her poems have been collected in 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium; The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish Poetry; Grabbed: Poets and Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment, and Healing; PEN Center USA’s The Rattling Wall; A Body You Talk To: An Anthology on Contemporary Disability; and Navigating Narratives: A Thematic Reader by Hawkes Learning, among others. Jen works as a dining critic and food-travel writer and lives in a historic home in a small village that is a designated bird sancturary in Miami. Follow her on Instagram @JenKaretnick or on Twitter @Kavetchnik.

Published Works

Poetry:
What Forges Us Steel: The Judge Judy Poems (chapbook; forthcoming from Alternating Currents Press)
The Burning Where Breath Used to Be
(2021 CIPA EVVY Gold Medal winner, 2021 Eric Hoffer Poetry Category Finalist, and 2021 Kops-Fetherling Honorable Mention; David Robert Books, 2020)
The Crossing Over (winner of the 2018 Split Rock Review Poetry Chapbook Contest; Split Rock Press, 2019)
The Treasures That Prevail (finalist for the 2017 Poetry Society of Virginia Book Prize; Whitepoint Press, 2016)
American Sentencing (long-listed for the 2017 Julie Suk Award and the 2017 Lascaux Prize; Winter Goose Publishing, 2016)
Brie Season (Kelsay Press, 2014)
Prayer of Confession (Finishing Line Press, 2014)
Landscaping for Wildlife (Big Wonderful Press, 2012)
Bud Break at Mango House (winner of the Portlandia Poetry prize; Portlandia Press, 2008)
Necessary Salt (Pudding House Publications, 2007)

Nonfiction:
The 500 Hidden Secrets of Miami (Luster, 2022, 2019, 2017)
Ice Cube Tray Recipes: 75 Easy and Creative Kitchen Hacks for Freezing, Cooking and Baking with Ice Cube Trays (Skyhorse Publishing, 2019)
From the Tip of My Tongue (with Cindy Hutson, winner of Gourmand Cookbook Awards; Story Publishing, 2018)
Mango (second place in the Les Dames d’Escoffier International M.F.K. Fisher Award for Excellence in Culinary Writing; University Press of Florida, 2014)
Born-Again Vintage (with Bridgett Artise, Potter Books, 2007)
Raw Food/Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow (with Sarma Melngailis and Matthew Kenney, Morrow Books, 2005)

Author Site

Links to Sample Works

Video Reading

Current Title

Freelance Writer

Education

University of California, Irvine, MFA, Poetry
University of Miami, MFA, Fiction
Tufts University, BA, English

Subject Matter

Genre