News

Forthcoming & Recent Publications

Some of Jehanne’s new poems and essays are forthcoming in Bellevue Literary Review, The Hopkins Review, Laurel Review, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly Review, and Subtropics.

Exhibitions: Essay on Art & Atrocity 

Jehanne’s new collection of lyric essays, Exhibitions: Essays on Art & Atrocity, was recently published by University of New Mexico Press. The book explores the ways that the artful objects in our lives can become occasions for self-reflection, exploring the relationship between family history, visual art, and genocide. Essays from Exhibitions have appeared in numerous journals, including Colorado Review, The Common, Image, and The New England Review.

Civilians: Poems

Jehanne’s tenth book of poems, Civilians, functions as the final book in her groundbreaking military spouse trilogy, concluding the work of earlier collections, Stateside (Northwestern University Press, 2010) and Dots & Dashes (Southern Illinois University Press, 2017). Civilians asks: What happens to the former soldier in the 21st century? What happens to the spouse, once physical and emotional distances are erased and she is reunited with her husband, a man made strange and foreign by his contact with war? Poems from Civilians have appeared in American Life in Poetry, Poetry Northwest, New England Review, Southern Review, Subtropics, and Poetry Daily, among others. Civilians will be published by Louisiana State University Press in Spring 2025.

Works-in-Progress: The Naturalist, Frivolity: A Defense, and The Wounded Line: A Guide to Writing Poems About Trauma

Jehanne is now working on a new collection, The Naturalist, which considers the relationship between the health of the body and the health of the body politic. Poems from The Naturalist have been published or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, and Ploughshares.

Continuing her adventures in the lyric essay, Jehanne is writing Frivolity: A Defense, an argument for the value of specific frivolous pursuits and objects. Under contract with Columbia University Press, this book-length essay champions frivolousness, particularly in times of darkness and political upheaval. Frivolity contends that some frivolous things are perhaps less trivial than we might imagine and that even the utterly shallow parts of our lives may offer beneficial, necessary diversions.

Finally, Jehanne is working on The Wounded Line: A Guide to Writing Poems About Trauma. The first of its kind (and many years in the making!), this accessible craft book will provide both new and accomplished poets with more than twenty practical strategies for representing and exploring trauma on the page. The Wounded Line will also include creative writing prompts, a series of best practices for writing for about trauma, as well as suggestions for further reading and research.