Join us and local poet Jen Jabaily-Blackburn as she reads from her latest book of poetry, Girl in a Bear Suit, winner of the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award. Contest judge Christopher Citro had this to say about it: “As I turned each page, it kept happening, another poem, another starling came in to roost next to my heart, adding its small but powerful flutter to the whirling filling me delightfully. I started to feel less afraid that it would stop, that the wonderment would be short-lived, and instead began to trust this book. I began to trust Jen, the poet, who'd created these poems. She knows what she's doing, and what she's doing is making art with every line, with every poem, with the whole journey this book takes you on from start to finish.”

Jen Jabaily-Blackburn's recent work has appeared in or is coming soon from SIR, Arkansas International, Palette Poetry, Salamander, Fugue, Banshee, On the Seawall and Couplet Poetry, and her poems have twice been selected for Best New Poets. She is currently at work on a series of mixed-media blackout poems, hem, drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Originally from the Boston area, she now lives in Western Massachusetts with her family. In 2024, she joined the advisory board of Perugia Press, and she is an associate editor of Nine Syllables Press, housed at Smith College, where she is the Program & Outreach coordinator for the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center.