In Volume Five: Chapter One, we welcome Educator, Poet, Author of the poetry collections Only Believe and Traveling Mercy, and Poet Laureate of Columbia South Carolina Jennifer Bartell Boykin.

Bio From Jennifer's Website:
Jennifer Bartell Boykin is the Poet Laureate of the City of Columbia, South Carolina. She was born and raised in Bluefield, a community of Johnsonville, SC. She received the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing with a Poetry Concentration (2014) and the Master of Library and Information Science (2024) from the University of South Carolina.

She is the author of her debut book of poetry Traveling Mercy (Finishing Line Press, 2023) and her second book of poetry Only Believe (The Word Works, 2024) is a 2023 winner of The Hilary Tham Capital Collection. Both are published under the name Jennifer Bartell. Her poetry has been published in Obsidian, Callaloo, pluck!, The Raleigh Review, kinfolks, Jasper Magazine, the museum americana, Scalawag, and Kakalak, among others.

She is a 2023 Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow and organized the Inaugural Soda City Poetry Festival in June 2024. An alumna of Agnes Scott College, Jennifer has additional fellowships from Callaloo and The Watering Hole. She is an award-winning English educator who has taught English for 16 years and was the 2019-2020 Teacher of the Year at Spring Valley High School. She is currently a school librarian at Muller Road Middle School in Blythewood, SC.

Contact Jennifer:
Instagram: @jennibb55 @columbiapoet
Website: jenniferbartellpoet.com

Featured Performance Poets in This Chapter:
Kira J - Bitter
Instagram: @allthingskiraj

Gabriel Ramirez - Whenever I Look Over My Balcony
Instagram: @ramirezpoet
Website: ramirezpoet.com

Andrea Gibson - The Nutritionist
Instagram: @andreagibson
Website: andreagibson.org
X: @andreagibson

Anita D - Family Matters
Instagram: @anitadpoetry

Asia Samson - Desks Are Not Bulletproof
Instagram: @theasiaproject
Website: theasiaproject.com