Biography
?Jenny Factor began writing poems as a child, mentored by the poet Myra Cohn Livingston. She earned a BA in anthropology at Harvard University, where she studied with Seamus Heaney, and an MFA in literature and poetry at Bennington College. Factor writes formal yet subversive poems that explore motherhood, marriage, sexuality, and transformation. Poet Christina Pugh praised the poems in Factor’s debut collection, the Hayden Carruth Award–winning Unraveling at the Name (2002), noting “Factor’s ability to make form sing with idiosyncrasy.”
Factor’s poems have been featured in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Erotic Poems (2008), Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry (2003), The Poet’s Child (2002), and Not for the Academy: Lesbian Poets Speak Out (1999). She has also been awarded a grant from the Astraea Foundation. Factor has worked as a freelance writer and editor and has taught at Antioch University, Los Angeles. She lives in San Marino, California.
