Jennifer Schomburg Kanke

Poet, Fiction Writer

Author's Bio

Jennifer Schomburg Kanke, after spending most of her life in Ohio, now lives in Florida where she is at work on a reimagining of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Evangeline set in the Florida Panhandle during the 1980s. Her work typically focuses on issues of class and gender in Appalachia and has recently appeared in New Ohio Review, Massachusetts Review, and Shenandoah. She is the winner of a Sheila-Na-Gig Editor’s Choice Award for Fiction. Her zine about her experiences undergoing chemotherapy for ovarian cancer, Fine, Considering, is available from Rinky Dink Press (2019). Her full-length poetry collection, The Swellest Wife Anyone Ever Had, about Appalachian Ohio, will be available from White Violet Press in Fall 2024. She can be found on YouTube hosting the Meter Cute Interviews podcast on Meter&Mayhem.

Publications & Prizes

Fiction

Anthology:
A String of Beads and Other Stories (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023)
Journals: , ,
Shenandoah
, ,
Westchester Review
Prizes won: 

Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Editor's Prize for Fiction- 2022

Science Fiction Poetry Association Contest (poems under 10 lines)-2013

Personal Favorites

Favorite authors: 
My favorite fiction authors are Kate Mascarenhas, Muriel Spark, Iris Murdoch, and Alison Stine. My favorite poets are Rita Dove, Annie Finch, and William Wordsworth. I've also been rediscovering Amy Lowell and am beginning to appreciate her work more now than I did when I was younger. I think she has a similar issue as Wordsworth has. You've got to go beyond the stuff that's most widely anthologized to get to the cool stuff.
What I'm reading now: 
Blue Bamboo by Osamu Dazai

More Information

Gives readings: 
Yes
Travels for readings: 
Yes
Identifies as: 
American, Appalachian, Feminist
Fluent in: 
English
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Last update: May 17, 2024