Jacqueline Allen Trimble
Photo by Jasmine Trimble Pugh
Bio
Jacqueline Allen Trimble is a poet and essayist. Her work has appeared in the Louisville Review;, the Offing; Poet Lore; The Night’s Magician, an anthology;and Southern Writers on Writing, a book of essays. American Happiness, her debut collection, won the 2016 Balcones Poetry Prize. Jennifer Horne, poet laureate of Alabama, wrote of the book, “Her grace is in the anger distilled to the bitter draft you savor as it bites.” Trimble also wrote five episodes for Die Testament, a South African streaming soap opera. A Cave Canem Fellow, Obsidian Fellow, and an Alabama State Council on the Arts Literary Fellow, Trimble holds a BA in English from Huntingdon College and a MA and PhD in English from the University of Alabama. She is professor of English and chairs the Department of Languages and Literatures at Alabama State University.
The moment I began to read I wanted to be a writer. Life had other plans, and that desire would not be fulfilled until, with my husband’s prodding, the year I turned 50. Despite many trepidations, I discovered it was not too late to become the poet I always hoped I could be. This National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship means money to travel, explore, go on retreats, and develop my craft. It will support time and space to finish my second collection, How to Survive the Apocalypse, and perhaps to create a short film of one of my poems, something I have always wanted to do. But even more than any of that, it provides much-needed encouragement, a sign that other poets have claimed me as one of their own.