JENNIFER PETERSON

Jennifer Polson Peterson is the author of Degenerate Era of an Expanding Universe (Belle Point Press, 2026) and Must Resemble Leisure (Seven Kitchens Press, 2022). She serves as the 2024-26 Poet Laureate of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. In 2025 she was named a Laureate Fellow of the Academy of American Poets. 

​

Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Colorado Review, Image, The Southern Humanities Review, Denver Quarterly, The Florida Review, and elsewhere. 

​

Her poems have been adapted for performance by choir and orchestra, featured on Poetry Daily, and nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize. She teaches writing at the University of Southern Mississippi.