James Michelin Distinguished Visitors Program

Jenny Factor is the author of two collections of poetry, Want, the Lake (Red Hen Press, 2024) and Unraveling at the Name (Copper Canyon, 2002). Her first collection, Unraveling, won the Hayden Carruth Award and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry has appeared in the Paris Review, California Poets from the Gold Rush to the Present, and the Best American Erotic Poems. Spanning two decades, Want, the Lake is an expansive dreamscape made of—and wrecked by—language, mother's milk, purple jacaranda, queer longing, snowy fields, and the rich stuff of domesticity and fable. This is a book guided by curiosity and loving alertness, until the anchor lifts, the timestamp fades, the ego falls away, and the reader is set free into the wet abyss of human need.