Patricia Spears Jones

About

Patricia Spears Jones was born in Forrest City, AR, and has lived in Brooklyn, N.Y., since the early ’90s. Jones states that she encountered The Great American Songbook in junior high in and has hummed from it ever since. She is a poet, educator, cultural activist, and the author of The Beloved Community (Copper Canyon Press, 2023), A Lucent Fire: New & Selected Poems (2015), Painkiller (2010), Femme du Monde (2006), and The Weather That Kills (1995). In 2023, Jones was named the new State Poet of New York by the New York State Writers Institute.