Jill R. Burkey
Jill Burkey’s work won the Mark Fischer Poetry Prize, and her poems, which have been called “warm, complex, and intensely satisfying,” have appeared in Deep Wild Journal, Front Range Review, Paddlefish, Pilgrimage, Plainsongs, Sixfold, Soundings Review, and others. Jill grew up on a three-generation cattle ranch in western Nebraska and began her education in a one-room schoolhouse. She later attended Nebraska Wesleyan University where she earned a BA in English and business with endorsements in secondary education. As a writer-in-residence for Colorado Humanities’ Writers-in-the-Schools program, Jill taught poetry and writing to hundreds of elementary and high school students on the Western Slope of Colorado where she lives with her family and runs her own business.