Jenny O'Grady

About Me

Jenny O'Grady likes to keep her poems to herself so she can make them into little book sculptures. Currently, she's working on a trio of doll-like books containing poems inspired by her favorite novel, The Tin Drum. By day she is director of alumni and development communications at UMBC and associate editor of UMBC Magazine; in the evening, she teaches book arts and electronic publishing as an adjunct professor in the University of Baltimore's Creative Writing and Publishing Arts MFA program, where she earned her MFA in 2006.

Jenny was one of five Baltimore writers featured in the 2009 "Emerging Artists" issue of Urbanite magazine. Her poetry has also been published in the Little Patuxent Review, and online in Everyday Genius and Splotches: Visual Pulse. Her book, "Autobiography," was included in the 2009 Bind-O-Rama on Philobiblon.com, the Book Arts Web.

Why do you write?

I like to think of writing as solving puzzles...I love to write with as few words as possible...I draw on memories of the farm where I grew up, dead relationships, whimsical characters I met while I was a reporter, zombies, and -- most recently -- my struggles with infertility and the rewards of adoption...

Any favorite authors? Books?

I love, love, love "The Tin Drum" by Gunter Grass. Also: A Confederacy of Dunces, Watchmen, To Kill a Mockingbird, the Fables comic books, Sandman, pretty much anything by Neil Gaiman or Aimee Bender, anything by Shakespeare, the list goes on and on...