Jacquelyn Malone: New Poems, Broadside Contest Winner

The first time I read Jacquelyn Malone’s name, it was on a list of writers who had been awarded a prestigious National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. That was around 1990, I think. She was listed as a Lowell resident who had won in the poetry category. I was impressed and a little envious, to be honest.

When we later met, I learned that she had worked in the high-tech sector for companies like IBM and Lotus at the same time that she was writing poems. We became friends over coffee talks in downtown Lowell. In recent years, she has been active with the Mass Poetry organization that produces the annual Massachusetts Poetry Festival in Salem, Mass.

She is the author of a poetry chapbook (or pamphlet) called All Waters Run to Lethe (Finishing Line Press), and her work has appeared in many literary journals, including Poetry magazine in Chicago, Poetry Northwest, and the Beloit Poetry Journal, all top-tier publications.

She will have two poems in the next issue of Salamander and another is due in Naugatuck River Review, where she was a semi-finalist in the narrative poetry category. This year, she was one of three winners of the Tupelo Press broadside contest. The broadside or poem printed on a large sheet, often done in letter-press format with an illustration, will be available in 2019.

Jacquelyn is from Tennessee, a place that has been the source of some of her writing, especially work informed by archival materials like historical letters and records. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College, where she studied with Louise Gluck and other writers. Recently, she joined Warren Wilson alumni for a reading.