Jen Bervin

Jen Bervin is a multidisciplinary visual artist and poet originally from Iowa. She earned her BFA in fine and studio arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as her MA in English from the University of Denver. 

Bervin has published numerous poetry and art books, among them Concordance Omission (Granary Books, 2023); Jen Bervin: Shift Rotate Reflect (Selected Works 1997–2020) (University Galleries of Illinois State University, 2022); Silk Poems (Nightboat Books, 2017), a New Museum Book of the Year and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award; Emily Dickinson: The Gorgeous Nothings (New Directions, 2013), a Book of the Year selection by The New Yorker; and Nets (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004).

In a review of Bervin’s work, John Yau dubbed her an “unclassifiable artist,” writing, “Each work is different, including her artist books. [...] [S]he has expanded the notion of what it is to be a poet in the [twenty-first] century.” 

In 2000, Bervin was awarded the Edward M. Lannan Prize, an Academy of American Poets University & College Poetry Prize. Her other honors include residencies with the Rauschenberg Foundation, Brown University, and the University of Arizona Poetry Center, fellowships with the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as grants from Creative Capital and the Mellon Foundation.  

For five years, Bervin was a core faculty member in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program in writing. She has been an artist coach with Creative Capital, as well as a lecturer at Northwestern University and a workshop instructor at Poets House. Her artwork has been exhibited internationally. She is based in both Guilford, Connecticut, and Brooklyn, New York.