Patricia Spears Jones is poet and playwright and author of three collections, most recently Painkiller (2010), Tia Chucha Press and four chapbooks. A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems is scheduled for publication in 2015 by White Pine Press.  Mabou Mines commissioned and produced ‘Mother’ and Song for New York: What Women Do When Men Sit Knitting, both premiered in New York City. She is editing The Future Differently Imagined for about place, the journal for Black Earth Institute  as well as the  blog project: 30 Days Hath September ; Think: Poems For Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Day Hat/ (2009) and Ordinary Women: An Anthology of Poetry by New York City Women (1978).  Poems are anthologized in Angles of Ascent; Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry; broken land: Poems of Brooklyn, bumrush: the page and Best American Poetry, 2000.  Her poetry is featured in www.poets.org, African Voices, The Agni Review, Bomb, Barrow Street, The Brooklyn Rail, Callaloo, The Catamaran Review, EOAGH , www.kwelijournal.org, Fifth Wednesday, The Oxford American, Taos: Journal of the Arts, The Recluse,  The Southampton Review, TriQuarterly, Tin House and upstreet. Prose, interviews and arts commentary are found in Calabar, http://cultureid.com, the Harriet blog for The Poetry Foundation,  The Poetry Project Newsletter, The Village Voice, www.tribes.org, and Bomb, where she is a contributing editor. Recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Art, the New York Community Trust (Oscar Williams/Gene Derwood Award), Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Bread Loaf, the Millay Colony, VCCA, Yaddo and the Goethe Institut (Boston)  for travel/research in Germany. Former Program Coordinator at St. Mark’s Poetry Project , she served as Mentor for in the first year of its new fellowship program, Emerge Surface Be. She curates WORDS SUNDAY, a literary series in Brooklyn.  She is a Lecturer, LaGuardia Community College and Queens College and is a senior fellow at Black Earth Institute.

Website: www.psjones.com

Twitter Username: @pksjones1

Publications

• A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems , White Pine Press (October 2015)
• The Weather That Kills , Coffee House Press (May 1995)
• Painkiller , Tia Chucha Press (November 2010)
• Femme du Monde , Tia Chucha Press (May 2006)

Awards

• The Oscar Williams/Gene Derwood Award-New York Community Trust(2012)
• Senior Fellow, Black Earth Institute(2011)
• Yaddo Corporation Residency(2008)
• Foundation of Contemporary Art(1996)

Employment

• Adjunct Lecturer, CUNY at LaGuardia Community College, (September 2010 - June 2015)
• Curator, Literary Series at WORDS SUNDAY (October 2014 - June 2015)

Degrees

• Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Vermont College MFA in Creative Writing (January 1992)

Genres of Interest

Creative nonfiction, Playwriting, Poetry