Jennifer Bartell Boykin

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Poet Laureate of Columbia, South Carolina
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Jennifer Bartell Boykin was born and raised in Bluefield, a community in Johnsonville, South Carolina. She received a BA in English literature and creative writing from Agnes Scott College and an MFA in poetry from the University of South Carolina. She also has a master of library and information science from the University of South Carolina.

Bartell Boykin is the author of Only Believe (The Word Works, 2024) and Traveling Mercy (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including Obsidian, Callaloo, the Raleigh Review, kinfolks: a journal of black expression, the museum of americana: a literary review, and Scalawag. Bartell Boykin is the recipient of fellowships from Callaloo and The Watering Hole. 

She has been an English educator for over seventeen years; she taught at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina, where she was named the 2019–20 Teacher of the Year. She is currently a school librarian at Muller Road Middle in Blythewood, South Carolina.

Bartell Boykin currently serves as poet laureate of Columbia, South Carolina. In 2023, Bartell Boykin received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship