Jane Satterfield: Assignation at Vanishing Point, Her Familiars

The daughter of an American airman and a British mother, Jane Satterfield grew up near Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland. She is a poet, essayist, professor, and mother. She is also a fan of The Clash, The Smiths, P. J. Harvey, and more. Her literary idols include the Brontës, Sylvia Plath, Larry Levis, Angela Carter, and Michael Ondaatje. In her spare time, she cooks (vegetarian) and bakes (scones and Empire biscuits). She received her education at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Loyola College.

Satterfield is the author of four books. Her poetry collections are Her Familiars, published by Elixir Press and a finalist for the Julie Suk Award for best poetry book on an independent press; Assignation at Vanishing Point, which received the Elixir Press Book Award; and Shepherdess with an Automatic, awarded the Towson University Prize for Literature.

Her book of nonfiction prose, Daughters of Empire:  A Memoir of a Year in Britain and Beyond (Demeter Press), explores maternal legacies through interconnected essays on music, popular culture, literary mothers, and personal history.

Satterfield’s honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in poetry and three Maryland Arts Council poetry grants, as well as residencies in poetry or nonfiction from the Vermont Studio Center and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Among her other awards are the Mslexia Women’s Poetry Prize, the Bellingham Review’s 49th Parallel Poetry Prize, first prize in the Ledbury Poetry Festival competition,  the William Faulkner Society’s Gold Medal for the Essay, and the Florida Review Editors’ Prize in Nonfiction.

Satterfield’s poetry and prose have appeared in American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Blackbird, The Common, Crazyhorse, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Pleiades, Quarterly West, and many more, as well as on Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. She is currently Literary Editor for JMI, the journal of MIRCI (the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement), based in Ontario.

Satterfield’s partner is poet Ned Balbo who shares in many of her adventures. They are the guardians of two cats.

Links:
Her Familiars
Assignation at Vanishing Point
Official Website