Biographical Info

Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican-American and Indigenous poet and novelist from the Southwestern desert and the recipient of poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices.

She is the author of five full-length poetry collections and three novels, most recently Belly to the Brutal (Wesleyan University Press) and novel River Woman, River Demon (Blackstone Publishing) which draw from her practice of brujería. Her latest novel was chosen for Amazon’s Book Club and as a National Together We Read Library Pick and was featured on CBS Mornings. It also won a Silver Medal for the International Latino Book Award in the Rudolfo Anaya Latino-Focused Fiction category.

Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, POETRY, TriQuarterly, The Boston Review, The Rumpus, Salon, Ploughshares, and many others. She’s received the Southwest Book Award, New Ohio Review’s Poetry Prize, Phoebe Journal’s Greg Grummer Poetry Prize, the Pinch Journal Poetry Prize, and Cutthroat’s Joy Harjo Poetry Prize.

Givhan is currently the Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at The University of New Mexico.