Jen Payne is a poet, author, photographer, and artist. She is inspired by those life moments that move us most — love and loss, joy and disappointment, milestones and turning points. Her writing serves as witness to these in the form of poetry, creative non-fiction, flash fiction and essay. When she is not exploring our connections with one another, she enjoys contemplating our relationships with nature, creativity, spirituality, and our inner lives. Ultimately, she believes it is the alchemy of those things that helps us find balance in this frenetic, spinning world.

Under the imprint Three Chairs Publishing, www.3chairspublishing.com, she has published five books: LOOK UP! Musings on the Nature of Mindfulness, Evidence of Flossing: What We Leave Behind, Waiting Out the Storm, Water Under The Bridge: A Sort-of Love Story, and her new book of poetry, Sleeping with Ghosts.

Her quarterly print project MANIFEST (zine) is a hold-in-your-hands art installation featuring Jen’s writing and mixed-media collage work, along with photography, quotes, and bits and pieces of creative whatnot.

Jen’s work has been featured in numerous publications including the international anthology Coffee Poems: Reflections on Life with Coffee, the Guilford Poets Guild 20th Anniversary Anthology, Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis, the 2024 Connecticut Literary Anthology, Sunspot Literary Journal, and The Perch, a publication by the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health.

Jen is the owner is Words by Jen, a graphic design and creative services company founded in 1993, based in Branford, Connecticut — where she keeps house with a cat named Molly. She’s been interviewed by the New York Times, has written talking points for a Kennedy, and is a member of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, the Guilford Art Center, and the New England Poetry Club.

You can read more of her writing on her blog Random Acts of Writing, www.randomactsofwriting.net.

https://linktr.ee/jenpayne