Jennifer Maritza McCauley is a teacher, writer, and editor of African-American and Puerto Rican descent. She holds or has held editorial positions at The Missouri Review, Origins Journal, and The Florida Book Review, amongst other outlets, and has received creative writing fellowships from The National Endowment of the Arts, Kimbilio, CantoMundo, the Knight Foundation, and Sundress Academy of the Arts. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets University Award and has appeared in Passages North, Puerto del Sol, The Los Angeles Review, Jabberwock Review, and elsewhere.

Books by Jennifer Maritza McCauley:

Other poems on the web by Jennifer Maritza McCauley:
Three poems
Four poems
"Some Advice"
Two poems
"40 Ways to Avoid Sexual Assault"

Jennifer Maritza McCauley's Website.

Jennifer Maritza McCauley on Twitter.

Jennifer Maritza McCauley on Facebook.

About Scar On/Scar Off:

"McCauley's debut collection of poems and prose immediately made me a fan. She wields 'rebel language' that goes straight for the heart and soul, weaving tales that make a reader shiver and sigh. She's fearless, forthright, but never glib or gaudythis is honest writinga voice that is thrilling to witness. The truths this poet reveals are not pretty, but she handles them with an earned grace, a street-tested vibe. This collection is far more than 'black girl magic,'it's 'black woman essential."
—Allison Joseph

"This book! It moves and breathes and sings like a living organism. The pulse is vital, the insights sharp as a blade. Who speaks truth to power this way: 'Tell them we been mournin' bullet-warmed/ blood long before they told us: now this is how/ you interpret a death?' Who strikes the page with such a necessary question: 'how boring/is your/ego that my/darkface/still bothers/you/this much?' Jennifer Martiza McCauley is the answer: an essential, undaunted, luminous new voice who carries within her many voices, many stories. Scar On/Scar Off is poetry that conjures and skewers our fractured zeitgeist."
—Julie Marie Wade

"There is a type of loss that cannot be represented, though its feeling can be caught, like a yawn as wide as the place where endings meet beginnings. When I read Jennifer Maritza McCauley, I feel like I'm falling into myself, snagged on something I forgot to look at while I was busy mourning some other, closer loss. My hand is being guided across the page, salty words lapping up into my wounds. I remember I have lost something. I remember we have lost something, and I can see its outline, like the lips of an open mouth. Words spill back into it, reminding me why I first came to language."
—Raquel Salas Rivera

"McCauley's poetry breaks my heart. It's so, so fantastic."
—Joanna C. Valente

"McCauley's poetry is the real deal! Fiercely feminine and exceedingly humane, 'Scar On/Scar Off' will surprise, delight, and then heal some part of you that you didn't even know was hurting."
—Denise Duhamel