Jennifer Litt

Jennifer Litt is the author of the chapbook, Maximum Speed Through Zero (Blue Lyra Press, 2016). Her full-length poetry collection, Strictly from Hunger, was released from Accents Publishing in June 2022. Jennifer’s work has appeared in several publications, including Blue Earth Review, ellipsis…literature and art, Gulf Stream, Jet Fuel Review, Lumina, Naugatuck River Review, nycBigCityLit, South Florida Poetry Journal, and Stone Canoe. She lives in Fort Lauderdale.

After graduating from the University of Rhode Island with a BA in English, I moved to London, England, to work as an au pair for the three children of two journalist parents and to absorb the culture. It was a year of surprises: a British ambassador’s daughter added to the mix; earning a Diploma of Chelsea College (MA equivalent) in Modern Social and Cultural Studies, and enduring an attack by kittiwakes and guillemots while taking a boat tour with the Royal Bird Watching Society. After returning to the States and earning my secondary teaching certification, I taught high school English in Miami, Florida, and then adult literacy in Rochester, New York, where obtaining Education-through-the-Arts grants and facilitating collaborative literary/literacy projects with other community organizations became my focus.

My mother died less than a month after I turned 50. That year I ran my one and only marathon on Mount Desert Island, Maine, cheered on my son when he rowed for Cornell at Henley-on-Thames, worked as an adjunct writing instructor at several area colleges, and established a writing services business. Cobbling together a living was both freeing and frightening, but it did give me time to write—with poetry gradually edging out fiction. To be closer to my family, I relocated to Fort Lauderdale. Writing and revising strictly from hunger has taken me several years, but I’ve enjoyed all aspects of this undertaking. I look forward to new adventures.