Jennifer Horne

Jennifer Horne served as the twelfth Poet Laureate of Alabama (2017-2021). The author of three collections of poems, Bottle Tree, Little Wanderer, and Borrowed Light, she also has written a collection of short stories, Tell the World You’re a Wildflower. A fourth volume of poems, Letters to Little Rock, was published by Kelsay Books in 2024.

Her biography of the writer Sara Mayfield, Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange Tale of Sara Mayfield, Author, was published by the University of Alabama Press in 2024.

She has edited or co-edited five volumes of poetry, essays, and stories, and in 2020 she co-edited, with her sister, a collection of their mother’s poetry, Root & Plant & Bloom: Poems by Dodie Walton Horne. With Jay Lamar, she co-edited Old Enough: Southern Women Artists and Writers on Creativity and Aging (UGA Press, 2024).

Horne has taught creative writing in a variety of settings, including the position of Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Lenoir-Rhyne University for the spring semester of 2018, has been the recipient of fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Seaside Institute in Florida, and in 2015 was awarded the Druid City Literary Arts Award, given by the Tuscaloosa Arts Council. In 2025 she was the recipient of the Hall-Waters Prize for Excellence in Southern Writing.

Photo credit: Don Noble