Jo Pitkin earned a BA in Creative Writing and Literature from Kirkland College and an MFA in Poetry from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. She is the author of The Measure (Finishing Line Press), Cradle of the American Circus: Poems from Somers, New York (The History Press), and Commonplace Invasions (Salmon Poetry) and editor of Lost Orchard: Prose and Poetry from the Kirkland College Community (State University of New York Press). Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including The New York Review of Books, Little Star, Quarterly West, Salamander, Southern Humanities Review, Terrain, Crab Orchard Review, Nimrod International Journal, A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley, Even the Daybreak: 35 Years of Salmon Poetry, and Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace. After working as an editor at Houghton Mifflin Company, Jo pursued a career as a freelance writer for educational publishers throughout the United States. She lives and works in New York’s Hudson River Valley at the river’s narrowest and deepest point.
