Meet Mesa County Libraries 970West Artist in Residence Jill Burkey from 10:30a.m. - 12 p.m. every Tuesday at the 970West Studio and talk with her about her poetry. The Meet and Greet is open on a drop-in basis; no reservation required.

The 970West Studio is located just North of the Central Library at 502 Ouray Avenue.

About the Artist:

Jill Burkey is a poet, writer, and editor living on the Western Slope of Colorado. In her poems, which circle around the themes of nature, relationships, history, and spirituality, Jill explores the larger existential questions of humanity, and makes connections between life, the natural world, and the passage of time.

Jill grew up on a three-generation cattle ranch in western Nebraska and began writing in high school. She earned a BA in English, business administration, and secondary education at Nebraska Wesleyan University and has taught hundreds of elementary and high school students poetry and writing as a writer-in-residence with the Colorado Humanities’ Writers-in-the-Schools program.

Jill’s poems have been called warm, complex, and intensely satisfying, and they have appeared in Sixfold, Pilgrimage Magazine, Paddlefish, Soundings Review, Front Range Review, Grand Valley Magazine, IMPROV Anthology of Colorado Poets, The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, and others. Two of her poems were included in The Untidy Season: An Anthology of Nebraska Women Poets by Backwaters Press, which received the Nebraska Book Award for anthology.  Jill’s work also won the Mark Fischer Poetry Prize and other awards and honorable mentions. She is currently working on her first collection of poetry, Enough.

Check her out on her website at https://www.jillburkey.com/