About
Jennie B. Ziegler completed her M.F.A. in Nonfiction Writing at the University of Arizona and was a recipient of their Foundation Award. Her work has been previously nominated for a Pushcart and has been published in MAYDAY Magazine, Squawk Back, Motherly, The Normal School, Essay Daily, Appalachian Review, Luna Luna Magazine, Crab Fat Magazine, Atlas and Alice, and Consilience, among other outlets. Apart from her creative work, her scholarship focuses on community-based learning practices as well as experiential learning. She has forthcoming work in The Washington Square Review and the Roanoke Review and currently serves as the nonfiction advisor for The Talon Review. She often focuses on science, geography, the body, folklore, geology, botany, space, and regional identity across all genres of her work. Currently, she is an educator based out of the University of North Florida, where she teaches a variety of coursework including grant writing, creative writing, composition, children’s literature, and reading advocacy classes. A proponent of experiential learning, she seeks to support the interdisciplinary in each of her courses. Find her at @InTheFourteenth.
The Great Dark Spot on Neptune (NASA)
Recent publications
On Foundation Laying (ESSAY): A personal autoethnography
The Washington Square Review (forthcoming)
Pampas furls under my skin. The air is slow, heavy with water. To think—once I was pressed, fired, and dried by brick and leveled asphalt, built up into an angular Dutch roof, deep with sloping eaves. My bones were steel, iron and carbon, culled from northern mountains softened from volcanic peaks down to rolling rock. Buildings scraped like nails towards the skylight. Rowhomes assembled like teeth.
Fire breaks, baker’s alleyways. A breath between. The aging of post-boom steel towns. What now? Dig deep into the mountains, begging coal. Tongues curl around vowels, flattening them like crunched cans.
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The Many-Eyed Giant (fiction): A story on grief and Argus, the watchman
The Squawk Back
On the first day I sit in an emptied seat. In the corners. On the couch, wishing it were plastic-lined. I am not welcome here, but they did not see me slip in the doorway, through the window, across a threshold they thought protected, they thought friendly and full. I nudge room for myself. They are strained at the sight of me. I was not invited in.
I place my stethoscope into their ears and press the resonator to their skin. I listen to their lungs and over-loud hearts. Bewildered hickory nut eyes. I fill their stomachs to ward off hunger until it begins to cramp. They look at me in bright shock as I eat their tears.
They are angry with me. I replaced all the lightbulbs in the house. They lost the warm yellow glow of sitcom evenings. The new bulbs are the white daylight kind. But I need them to see. They squint away from me, and so I wait. Patient.
In my way, I am not unkind.
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Memory recall (Hybrid Erasure Poem)
Consilience: A Journal of Art and Science
[Dispatches from the Last Voyager
During its Flyby of Neptune,
The Last Planet
12 Years Post-Launch]
PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
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editorial & Professional work
Nonfiction Advisor for The Talon Review
Nonfiction Judge for the University of North Florida Amy Roberts-Wainright Creative Writing Award
The University of North Florida Creative Writing Scholarship Judge
UNF’s Osprey Community Engagement Medallion Rater
The Florida Blue Center for Ethics Scholarship Rater
Former Associate Editor of Dying Dahlia Review
Florida Institute of Oceanography
Community and educational partners
UNF Hicks Honors College
UNF Writing Program and Center
The UNF Center for Community-Based Learning
The UNF First Year Experience: Osprey Connections
The Florida Institute of Oceanography
Wolfson Children’s Hospital
Miles to Row
Communities in Schools - Jacksonville
AWARDS
UNF Faculty Association Undergraduate Teaching Award Nomination, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2023
UNF Faculty Association Undergraduate Community Engaged Scholarship Award Nomination, 2021
UNF Faculty Association Faculty Service Award Nomination, 2021, 2023
Sigma Tau Delta Faculty Appreciation Award, 2019
Pushcart Prize Nomination, 2016
Distinguished Member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, 2013
University of Arizona Foundation Award, 2010
University of Arizona Fellowship, 2008-2010
Book Drive Donation Drop for Wolfson Children’s Hospital
Communities in Schools Outreach
Professional Affliations
Phi Kappa Phi
The Association of Writers and Writing Programs
Education
The University of Arizona
M.F.A. NONFICTION WRITING
Foundation Award Recipient
The ohio state university
B.A. ENGLISH AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Graduation with Distinction