Jane Satterfield

The daughter of an American Air Force reservist and a British mother, Jane Satterfield grew up near Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland. She is a poet, essayist, professor, and mother. She is also a fan of The Clash, The Smiths, P. J. Harvey, and more. Her literary idols include the Brontės, Sylvia Plath, Larry Levis, Angela Carter, and Michael Ondaatje. She received her education at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Loyola College.

Jane is the author of five books. Her books of poetry are Apocalypse Mix (Autumn House), selected by David St. John for the 2017 Autumn House Poetry Prize; Her Familiars (Elixir Press), a finalist for the Julie Suk Award for best poetry book on an independent press; Assignation at Vanishing Point, which received the Elixir Press Book Award; and Shepherdess with an Automatic, awarded the Towson University Prize for Literature.

Her book of nonfiction prose, Daughters of Empire: A Memoir of a Year in Britain and Beyond (Demeter Press), explores maternal legacies through interconnected essays on music, popular culture, literary mothers, and personal history. Among the honors earned by individual essays when first published are the William Faulkner Society’s Gold Medal for the Essay, the Florida Review Editors’ Prize in Nonfiction, and the John Guyon Literary Nonfiction Prize.

With Laurie Kruk, Jane is co-editor of the multi-genre anthology Borderlands and Crossroads: Writing the Motherland (Demeter Press).

Jane’s honors in poetry include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Mslexia Women’s Poetry Prize, the Bellingham Review’s 49th Parallel Poetry Prize, and first prize in the Ledbury Poetry Festival competition.

Jane’s work appears widely in print or on-line: look for recent essays in Baltimore Fishbowl and Superstition Review; look for recent poetry in Blackbird, The Common, Crazyhorse, Memorious, Southword, and in the Verse Daily and Poetry Daily columns. She is currently Literary Editor for JMI, the journal of MIRCI (the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement), based in Ontario.

Jane’s partner is poet Ned Balbo. They are the guardians of two cats.