University of Illinois Springfield English Instructor Jennifer Whalen’s first book of poems has been selected by the poet Rick Barot for the 2022 Lightscatter Press Prize. Her book, “Eveningful,” will be available for purchase in spring 2024.

Whalen is a poet and educator from the Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati, Ohio area. Her poems have been published in Gulf Coast, Denver Quarterly, Southern Indiana Review, New South, Glass: A Journal for Poetry, The Boiler, Grist and elsewhere.

In 2015-2016, she served as writer-in-residence at Texas State University’s L.D. & LaVerne Harrell Clark House.

For more information on Whalen, and to read some of her poems, visit her website.