Originally from coal-country Pennsylvania, Jackie Chicalese (she/her) is currently an MFA student in Poetry at the University of Arkansas’s Program in Creative Writing & Translation, where she also serves as Graduate Assistant to the Brown Chair in English Literacy.

She’s currently the Communications Intern for Open Mouth Literary Center, a non-profit poetry reading and workshop series based in Fayetteville, AR, and has previously served as Poetry Editor of The Arkansas International and staff for Arkansas Writers in the Schools (WITS). Jackie writes about death and gardens, and her poems have appeared in Salt Hill Journal, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She lives with her spouse and moody tabico cat, Calypso.