Pictured at Books & Books, Coral Gables
Poet, writer, food-travel journalist, dining critic, and educator Jen Karetnick is the author/co-author of 22 books, including seven full-length poetry collections: Organ Language (Lit Fox Books, forthcoming September 2026); Domiciliary (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, forthcoming October 2026); Inheritance with a High Error Rate, winner of the 2022 Cider Review Press Book Award (January 10, 2024), a semi-finalist for the 2025 PSV North American Book Prize and longlisted for the 2025 Julie Suk Award; The Burning Where Breath Used to Be (David Robert Books, 2020), 2021 CIPA EVVY Gold Medal winner, 2021 Eric Hoffer Poetry Category Finalist, and 2021 Kops-Fetherling Honorable Mention; The Treasures That Prevail (Whitepoint Press, September 2016), finalist for the 2017 North American Poetry Book Award from the Poetry Society of Virginia; American Sentencing (Winter Goose Publishing, May 2016), long-listed for both the 2017 Julie Suk Award and the 2017 Lascaux Prize; and Brie Season (White Violet Press, 2014).
She is also the author of six poetry chapbooks: What Forges Us Steel: The Judge Judy Poems (Alternating Current Press, forthcoming spring 2026); The Crossing Over (March 2019), winner of the 2018 Split Rock Review Poetry Chapbook Contest, Prayer of Confession (Finishing Line Press, 2014); Landscaping for Wildlife (Big Wonderful Press, 2012); Bud Break at Mango House, winner of the 2008 Portlandia Prize; and Necessary Salt (Pudding House Publications, 2007).
In addition, Jen is the editor of two anthologies of Florida poets and writers.
She is the winner of the 2025 Prime 53 Poem Summer Challenge; the 2024 Sweet: Lit Poetry Contest; the 2020 Tiferet Writing Contest for Poetry; the 2017 Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Contest; the 2016 Romeo Lemay Poetry Prize; and the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Prize (for which she was Honorable Mention in 1995). She was also awarded the 2011 “Piccolo in Your Pocket” Poetry Prize from the Alaska Flute Studies Center and received two Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg awards, one in 2008 and one in 2005.
Her poems have placed in more than three dozen competitions, including runner-up in the 2025 Sine Qua Non Inaugural Poetry Prize; finalist in the 2024 Beullah Rose Poetry Competition from Smartish Pace; semi-finalist in the 2024 Poet Hunt 29 from The MacGuffin; Honorable Mention in the 2024 Gylys Villanelle Contest from Poetry by the Sea; Honorable Mention in the 2023 inaugural Maureen Seaton Poetry Prize; Honorable Mention (2023), Finalist ( 2021), and Finalist (2020) in the Joy Harjo Poetry prizes from Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts; Short List (2025, 2024) and Longlist (2021) in the Alpine Fellowship for Poetry; Finalist in the 2021 Sweet: Lit Poetry Prize; Finalist in the 2019 Patricia Cleary Miller Award for Poetry from New Letters; Finalist in the 2019 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Contest from Tinderbox Poetry Journal; Finalist in the 2019 Construction Literary Magazine Poetry Contest; Honorable Mention in the 2019 Passager Journal Poetry Contest; Honorable Mention in the 2018 Headway Quarterly’s Inaugural Writing Contest; Finalist in the 44th New Millennium Awards; Runner-Up in The Atlantis Poetry Award; Finalist in the Bermuda Triangle Prize; Semi-Finalist in the 2017 Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize; Second and Third Places in two Palm Beach Poetry Festival Competitions; Third Prize and Finalist in two River Styx International Poetry Prizes; Second Place and Finalist in two Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prizes; Finalist in the 2009 Patricia Dobler Poetry Award; Semi-Finalist in the 1998 and 1999 Discovery/The Nation Poetry Prizes; and others.
A 2024 National Poetry Series finalist for her manuscript Sensor Hypothesis, she has also placed manuscripts in a variety of prizes, including the 2025 3 Mile Harbor Press; 2025 Longleaf Book Prize; 2024 Dzanc Poetry Prize; 2024 Washington Prize from The Word Works; 2023 Terry J. Cox Poetry Award from Regal House Publishing; 2024 and 2023 Richard Snyder Publication Prize from Ashland Poetry Press; 2022 and 2021 Two Sylvias Press Wilder Prize; 2021 Sheila-Na-Gig Poetry Chapbook Manuscript Competition; 2019 Jacar Press Full-Length Manuscript Competition; 2019 Gold Wake Press Open Reading Period; 2019 Jacar Press Chapbook Competition; 2018 Sunken Garden Chapbook Competition; Finalist in the 2017 Laurel Review Midwest Chapbook Competition; Finalist in the 2017 Center for Book Arts Letter Press Chapbook Award; and more.
Her work has been nominated for seven Pushcart Prizes and six Best of the Net awards.
Jen earned an MFA in poetry from the University of California, Irvine, where she was a fellow and graduate teaching assistant, and an MFA in fiction from the University of Miami, where she was also a fellow and graduate teaching assistant. Her poetry, prose, playwriting, and interviews have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Cold Mountain Review, The Comstock Review, Harpur Palate, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Missouri Review Poem of the Week, One, Painted Bride Quarterly, Plume, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Prime Number Magazine, Salamander, Spillway, Terrain.org, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Under a Warm Green Linden, Verse Daily, and Waxwing, among others. You can also find seven of her poems on the pillows–as part of the nightly turn-down service–at Acqualina Resort.
Named a juried poet in 2014 for Houston Poetry Fest, she has performed in an episode of Literary Death Match and read at multiple book fairs, bookstores, and literary conferences internationally.
Her creative and educational work has been supported by grants, fellowships, and residencies from Artists in Residence in the Everglades; The Betsy-South Beach Writer’s Room; Centrum; Idyllwild Arts; the Maryland Transit Administration’s Purple Line Writers’ Program; Miami-Dade Artist Access; Miami-Dade Artist Individual Grant; Mother’s Milk Artist Residency; O, Miami; Pine Meadows Ranch Center for Arts and Agriculture/Roundhouse Foundation; The Solarium International Inn and Hostel in Fort Collins, Colorado; Stove Works; Vermont Studio Center; Wassaic Project; Wildacres Retreat; Write On, Door County; and Writers in Paradise. For 2019-2020, she was an Artist-in-Residence for the Deering Estate, which was interrupted by the pandemic.
She is co-founder/co-curator of the non-profit organization, SWWIM (Supporting Women Writers in Miami), which offers residencies and a reading series for women-identifying poets, and Managing Editor of its publishing arm, the daily online literary journal, SWWIM Every Day. A former adjunct lecturer in composition and creative writing at Barry University and the University of Miami, she was the founding Creative Writing Director for grades 6-12 at Miami Arts Charter School from 2009-2018, where she coached students who achieved the following awards and honors, among others: National Student Poet for the Southeast; National Gold Medal Portfolio from Scholastic Art & Writing; National YoungArts Foundation Finalist, Honorable Mention, and Merit winners in fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry; Poetry Society of America Louise Louis/Emily F. Bourne Student Poetry Award; Princeton University 10-Minute Play Award; Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth/Creative Minds for creative non-fiction; The Kennedy Center Playwriting Award; Sierra Nevada College Creative Writing Competition for poetry; and Columbia College of Chicago for poetry and creative non-fiction.
In addition to teaching formally for 15 years at age levels ranging from university to 4th grade, she has taught workshops for SWWIM, Roundhouse Foundation, Miami Book Fair, and Piano Slam, and continues to teach masterclasses and workshops for all age groups in person and online.
Jen works as a freelance dining critic, food-travel writer, and cookbook and guidebook author/co-author. Her dining columns, critiques, features, essays, recipes, e-commerce reviews, and more have appeared in hundreds of magazines worldwide, including Allrecipes, TheAtlantic.com, BobVila.com, EatingWell, HuffPost, Miami Herald, NPR, Saveur, Southern Living, USA Today, Vinepair.com, and many in-flight magazines. In the past, she has worked on the masthead as a dining critic and food editor Miami New Times and New Times Broward-Palm Beach, South Florida Magazine, Las Olas Magazine, Lincoln Road Magazine, and MIAMI Magazine, and as the features editor for Wine News. Her online portfolio is located at kavetchnik.contently.com.
Jen is also the author/co-author of several hardcover trade books, including the cookbook Mango (University Press of Florida, 2014), which won second place in the Les Dames d’Escoffier International M.F.K. Fisher Award for Excellence in Culinary Writing. Her fourth guidebook, The 500 Hidden Secrets of Miami (Luster), was published in November 2017 and is now in its fourth updated edition (June 2024). Her fourth cookbook, Ice Cube Tray Recipes: 75 Easy and Creative Kitchen Hacks for Freezing, Cooking, and Baking with Ice Cube Trays (Skyhorse Publishing), was published in June 2019. She also co-authored the 2016 World Gourmand-winning From the Tip of My Tongue (Story Press, 2015) with Cindy Hutson and Delius Shirley, and Raw Food/Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow (William Morrow Cookbooks, 2005), with Matthew Kenney and Sarma Melngailis (see outtakes of the latter in episodes of Netflix’s Bad Vegan).
As a journalist and critic, she has received multiple first-place awards from such institutions as the Association of Food Journalists, North American Travel Journalists, and Society of Professional Journalists, and has placed in the Green Eyeshade Award, Greenbrier Scholarship Competition, and Missouri School of Journalism Awards.
Born and raised in New Jersey, Jen lived in the Mango House on the remaining acre of the historic homestead of Miami’s first postmaster with her husband, two children, a variety of rescue animals, and fourteen mango trees for nearly 20 years. She now lives in the Sherwood Forest House, a century-old restored Tudor house in El Portal, a designated bird sanctuary, in Miami.
For acquisitions and engagement inquiries, please contact Jessica Alvarez of BookEnds Literary at: JAlvarez@bookendsliterary.com
For readings, classroom visits, editorial, or educational requests, please contact Jen Karetnick at: kavetchnik@gmail.com
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