About Jen Payne

ABOUT RANDOM ACTS OF WRITING / ABOUT JEN PAYNE

Jen Payne is a poet, author, photographer, and artist. She is inspired by those life moments that move us most — love and loss, joy and disappointment, milestones and turning points. Her writing serves as witness to these in the form of poetry, creative non-fiction, flash fiction and essay. When she is not exploring our connections with one another, she enjoys contemplating our relationships with nature, creativity, spirituality and our inner lives. Ultimately, she believes it is the alchemy of those things that helps us find balance in this frenetic, spinning world.

Very often, her writing is accompanied by her own photography and artwork. As both a graphic designer and writer, Jen believes that partnering visuals and words layers the intentions of her work, and makes the communication more palpable.

Jen writes regularly here at Random Acts of Writing, including an annual attempt to write a poem a day during National Poetry Month and NaPoWriMo.

To accommodate her creative work, she founded Three Chairs Publishing in 2014. Since then, has published five books: LOOK UP! Musings on the Nature of Mindfulness, Evidence of Flossing: What We Leave Behind, FLOSSING, Waiting Out the Storm, and WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE: A Sort-of Love Story. Her newest book, Sleeping with Ghosts, will be published in 2024.

Her quarterly print project — MANIFEST (zine) — is part lit mag, part chapbook, part hold-in-your-hands art installation featuring writing, photography, and artwork, along with bits and pieces of creative whatnot.

Jen is the owner is Words by Jen, a graphic design and creative services company founded in 1993, based in Branford, Connecticut where she keeps house with a cat named Molly. She’s been interviewed by the New York Times, has written talking points for a Kennedy, and is a member of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, the Guilford Art Center, and the New England Poetry Club.

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THE EARLY YEARS

When I tell people I’ve been a writer all my life, they think I’m exaggerating.

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GETTING AROUND

• Two of her poems were selected to be published in the 2024 Connecticut Literary Anthology from Woodhall Press coming this fall.
• You can experience two of her poems as you walk the C.H. Booth Library’s Poetry Walk in Newtown, CT.
• Her poems have been selected for the international anthology Coffee Poems: Reflections on Life with Coffee, the Guilford Poets Guild 20th Anniversary Anthology, the Connecticut Bards Poetry Review 2022, and Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis, edited by Connecticut’s Poet Laureate Margaret Gibson, funded by the Academy of American Poets.
• The flash-fiction piece “In The Weeds” was published in The Perch, a publication by the Yale Program for Recovery & Community Health, and her writing has also been published by The Aurorean, Six Sentences, the Story Circle Network, WOW! Women on Writing, and The Poetry Institute zine Circumference (June 2022).
• One of 23 artists selected by SomethingProjects.net as part of their CT statewide art treasure hunt called THE EXCHANGE, supported by the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development and Connecticut Office of the Arts, curated by Howard el-Yasin & Suzan Shutan; featured at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT, 2022.
• The 100-word story “Rest Stop, Mile Marker 173” was selected as a finalist in the Sunspot Literary Journal’s Geminga 2022 Contest for Tiny Prose, Poem, or Art. (PDF)
• WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE: A Sort-of Love Story was featured in “45 Books We’re Excited About from Indie Presses and Indie Authors” from Independent Book Review in April 2022.
• The creative non-fiction essay “Compensation” was a finalist in the WOW! Women On Writing, Summer 2018 Flash Fiction Contest.
• Her poem “Wonder Women” was selected to be part of Vibe presented by Community Virtual New Haven.
• Installations of Jen’s poetry were featured in exhibitions at the Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery and the Kehler Liddell Gallery (New Haven).
• Several of her poems were selected for Chapter & Verse, a curated poetry event (New Haven).
• Photography from Evidence of Flossing was featured in the New Haven Arts Council exhibit “Where the Whole Universe Dwells” at the Perspectives Gallery at Whitney Center.
• Her photography has appeared in local newspapers, community publications and websites, and in several books.

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PRESS

• “Author Reaches Out to Old Love Online, Writes about It in New Novel,” Sue Braden, CT Insider/Shoreline Times, February 2022
• WOW! Women on Writing Blog Tour for Evidence of Flossing
• A Way with Words…, Pam Johnson, Senior Staff Writer, Shore Publishing
• Art Council’s ‘Universe’ exhibit opening in Gallery at Whitney Center, Joe Amarante, New Haven Register, May 2017
• New Haven artists, shaken and stirred, react to Trump inauguration, Joe Amarante, New Haven Register, January 2017
• “Shuffle & Shake” Dances with Time, Allan Appel, New Haven Independent, July 2016
• The Perch, Spring 2016
• Branford author Jen Payne invites us to Look Up!, Donna Doherty, New Haven Register, October 2014
• Serving Up Creative Soup, Susan Talpey, Shore Publishing, September 2008

The posts “Something More Important than Fear’ (December 2010) was featured as a WordPress Fresh Pressed selection.

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