Jen Hirt

Jen Hirt is the author of the poetry chapbook Too Many Questions About Strawberries, the memoir Under Glass: The Girl with a Thousand Christmas Trees, and a collection of essays, Hear Me Ohio. She is also the co-editor of two anthologies -- Creating Nonfiction: Twenty Essays and Interviews with the Writers, and Kept Secret: The Half-Truth in Nonfiction. She edited Mediums: Fact or Fiction? for Greenhaven Press. She was included in the anthologies From Curlers To Chainsaws: Women and Their Machines, and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy. She is the editor of the Journal of Creative Writing Studies.

Her books have won gold and silver awards from the Foreword Reviews INDIES contests, and her essay "Lores of Last Unicorns" won a Pushcart Prize after being published in The Gettysburg Review. "Glow in the Dark" won the Gabehart Prize. Her essays have been listed four times as "notable essays" in Best American Essays. Other essays and poems have appeared in over 50 literary journals. Her work has won grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Ohioana Library, and Bernheim Arboretum, as well as a Penn State Faculty Research Award. She is an alum of Hiram College, Iowa State University, and the University of Idaho. Jen is an associate professor at Penn State Harrisburg. She lives in midtown Harrisburg with Paul Cockeram and their black lab, Wesley.