J. C. Todd, a Poetry Fellow of the Pew Arts & Heritage Center and Rita Dove Poetry Prize winner, has focused recent work on the psychological and cultural dislocation of war for both civilians and combatants, especially women, children, and the poor. Her poems grapple with the awareness that every war or act of domination, whether in the home or around the globe, carries within it the seeds for the war that will answer it.Honored as a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Robert H. Winner Award, the poems of her book-length manuscript, Beyond All Repair, explore the effects of war on her family, particularly World War II and conflicts in the Middle East. The suffering of survivors and the erasures in their lives is central to Todd’s developing manuscript, Blood Work, a group of ekphrastic poems in dialogue with the war-related prints and drawings of the German Expressionist, Kaethe Kollwitz. Human dislocation is the focus of artist book collaborations with MaryAnn L. Miller, published by Lucia Press: On Foot/By Hand (2018) concerns a Syrian refugee’s arduous journey into exile, and FUBAR (2016), enacts a physician’s triage of a severely wounded soldier in Iraq.Previous books include What Space This Body (Wind Publications 2008), and chapbooks from Pine Press, Nightshade (1985) and Entering Pisces (2000). Her work has been supported with fellowships and residencies at the Ucross and Ragdale Foundations,Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hambidge Center, The Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators, Schloss Wiepersdorf and the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Program. Honors  include a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship, a Leeway Inspiration Award and a New Jersey Distinguished Teaching Artist Award. She was a writer-in-residence with theDepartment of English Languages, Humboldt University, Berlin and on the faculties of the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr College, Kutztown University and currently theMFA Program at Rosemont College and is a poetry facilitator with the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Program. She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Publications

• On Foot/By Hand (artist book) , Lucia Press (January 2018)
• FUBAR (artist book) , Lucia Press (March 2016)
• What Space This Body , Wind Publishers (December 2008)

Awards

• Rita Dove Poetry Prize, International Literary Awards(2016)
• Pew Fellowship in the Arts(2014)
• Eric Hoffer Micro-press Finalist(2018)
• Ragdale Foundation Fellow(2016)
• Pew Foundation Alliance of Artist Communities Fellow at Ucross(2018)
• Finalist, Robert H. Winner Award, Poetry Society of America(2015)
• Finalist, Lucille Medwick Award, Poetry Society of America(2006)

Employment

• Interim Faculty, Creative Writing, Retired at Bryn Mawr College (January 2006 - June 2017)
• Faculty, MFA Program at Rosemont College (September 2009 - June 2015)
• Poet at Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Program (October 1988 - )

Degrees

• Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Program for Writers, Waren Wilson College (July 1990)

Genres of Interest

Poetry