Welcome!
My poetry, fiction, and essays have been described as “muscular,” “hard-working,” “disciplined,” “scalpel-precise,” “grimly witty,” “scientific,” “ecstatic,” “sensuous,” “mythic,” and “full of surprises”–all of which might be fairly apt descriptions for me, too.
My writing classes–which range from Surrealist writing games to poetic constraints to nature writing–foster play, experimentation, and creativity.
I’ve led community writing classes for high school students, people who are incarcerated, military veterans and their families, LGBTQIA+ affinity groups, health care workers, and general audiences.
In all my classes, my goal is to help us build relationships with our inner wisdom, with each other, and with the more-than-human world.
Sign up for my monthly newsletter to stay up-to-date on my latest news and offerings.
Drop me a line to schedule readings or events, or just to say hello: jp@jenniferperrine.org
For random tidbits, follow me on Instagram.
Photo by K. B. Dixon
www.kbdixonimages.com
Books
Beautiful Outlaw
Winner of the Kelsey Street Press QTBIPOC Book Prize
& the 2026 Oregon Book Award Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry
“For heart, for smarts, for a scalpel-precise vision of our America at this moment—I want Jennifer Perrine’s poems to guide me through the misogyny, xenophobia, yearning, racism, connection, and gun-fascination of our time. It’s not just their bravery, but it’s also their formal mastery, particularly in the Beautiful Outlaw, a form that guides by absence. I am so grateful to have met Perrine’s voice, and I’m eager to see where it takes me.”
—Elizabeth Bradfield, author of Toward Antarctica and editor of Cascadia Field Guide
Purchase from Kelsey Street Press or your local bookseller,
or order a signed copy here.
Again
“Again deepens the rhetoric of idioms and presidential tweets, restoring adjectives like “tremendous” and “terrific” to complexity and nuance. Perrine looks both at what the individual self and individual words mean in a country that feels dystopian. These poems speak to the collective of a nation who is bearing a time full of disconnection and emotional hungers, but still ‘among the most decent of sinners.’ With these sensuous and often mythic makeovers, language shines again, even burns, but most importantly words start to mean again.”
—Traci Brimhall, author of Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod
Purchase from Airlie Press or your local bookseller,
or order a signed copy here.
No Confession, No Mass
Winner of the 2014 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry,
the 2015 Bisexual Book Award for Poetry,
& the 2016 Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Award
“No Confession, No Mass is lyrical, inventive, and full of surprises, offering us fresh ways of seeing old stories. The music is a delight throughout—agile and apt—language enjoying itself! Jennifer Perrine writes: ‘and returned her whole, startled raw, launched her back into the world.’ This is what fine poetry can do—and No Confession, No Mass does it.”
—Ellen Bass, author of Like a Beggar
Purchase from University of Nebraska Press or your local bookseller,
or order a signed copy here.
In the Human Zoo
Winner of the 2010 Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry
“Jennifer Perrine’s poems, saturated in taut emotion and even in overt violence, are yet cooled, disciplined, by rigorous rendering, carefully evoked locations and descriptions. Jennifer Perrine is a deeply committed poet, intelligent, intense and perceptive of the minutiae of inner and outer human trauma.”
—Anne Winters
Purchase from University of Utah Press or your local bookseller,
or order a signed copy here.
The Body Is No Machine
Winner of the 2008 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry
“Jennifer Perrine is a poet of formal agility and surprise, with a command of language that ranges from the spare to the luxuriously rampant, from the scientific to the ecstatic. The Body Is No Machine—indeed! Here we see the sensual body in all its chameleon shades of gender and passion. These poems are exact, intelligent, vivid, thrilling—a first book to admire, and a poet to watch.”
—Betsy Sholl
Purchase from New Issues or your local bookseller,
or order a signed copy here.
Events
To schedule readings or other events, email me at: jp@jenniferperrine.org
Upcoming Events:
Thursday, June 18, 2026, 2pm-6:10pm PT – Hudson Valley Writers Center (Livestream)
I’ll be part of a cavalcade of performances for The Word at 250, an in-person and livestreamed event hosted by the Hudson Valley Writers Center. This celebration of language, community, and the power of narrative includes poetry and prose readings and music. Join for the whole 250 minutes, or drop in for my spot (5:30-5:40pm PT). The event is pay-what-you-wish, and all are welcome. To view the full lineup and receive the livestream link, visit the HVWC website.
Wednesday, July 29, 2026, 7pm-9:30pm PT – Bird Alliance Wildlife Sanctuary, Portland, Oregon
I’m guiding a free full moon forest therapy walk, in collaboration with People of Color Outdoors and Bird Alliance of Oregon, as part of the Bird Days of Summer. On this sensory-focused walk beginning in daylight and ending in darkness, we’ll walk at a very slow pace with frequent stops for approximately 1.5 miles. The trail includes stairs and some steep elevation changes of 100-300 feet. Headlamps will be provided, and advanced registration is required.
Sunday, August 30, 2026, 7pm PT – Word Virus, Portland, Oregon
As part of the launch for Valerie Hsiung’s new book, The pedestrian, I’ll be reading alongside Valerie, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Jeffrey Pethybridge, Carolina Ebeid, and Consuelo Wise at Word Virus Books. The event is free and open to the public.
Sunday, September 13, 2026, 7pm PT – Ross Island Grocery & Café, Portland, Oregon
I’ll be reading as part of the Studio Series Poetry Reading and Open Mic alongside Jaye Nasir. The event is free and open to the public.
Thursday, November 5 – Sunday, November 8, 2026 – Port Orchard, Washington
I’ll be teaching two classes at Northwest Writers’ Weekend: Writing with Our More-Than-Human Kin and Only Connect: Finding Unity in Fragments. Registration for the weekend is $550, which includes lodging at a beautiful wooded retreat site, three scrumptious meals a day, and classes in poetry, songwriting, creative nonfiction, cross-genre writing, and art. Scholarships are available, and all classes are open to writers of all kinds and experience levels.
For more about upcoming events, subscribe to my monthly newsletter.
Jennifer (JP) Perrine
is the author of five books of poetry: Beautiful Outlaw, Again, The Body Is No Machine, In the Human Zoo, and No Confession, No Mass. Their other recent work appears in Best Small Fictions, A Mouth Holds Many Things: A De-Canon Hybrid Lit Collection, and Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, and Poetry. A two-time winner of Arts and Culture Diversity and Inclusion Awards from the Asian American Journalists Association, Perrine lives in Portland, Oregon, where they cohost the Incite: Queer Writers Read series, guide birding walks and forest therapy retreats, and manage an equity and environmental justice program for the state of Oregon.
Photo by KRP Photography
www.krpphotography.com
Thanks to Mercatus PDX