Jen Payne is a poet, writer, photographer, graphic designer, and artist. She is inspired by those life moments that move us most — love and loss, joy and disappointment, milestones and turning points. When she is not exploring our connections with one another, she enjoys contemplating our relationships with nature, creativity, and spirituality and our inner lives. Ultimately, she believes it is the alchemy of those things that helps us find balance in this frenetic, spinning world. / Very often, her writing is accompanied by her own photography and artwork. As both a graphic designer and writer, Jen believes that partnering visuals and words layers the intentions of her work, and makes the communication more palpable. / To accommodate her creative work, she founded Three Chairs Publishing in 2014. Since then, has published four books: LOOK UP! Musings on the Nature of Mindfulness, Evidence of Flossing: What We Leave Behind, Waiting Out the Storm, and Water Under the Bridge: A Sort-of Love Story. Her new book of poetry, Sleeping with Ghosts, will be published in 2024. / Her quarterly print project MANIFEST (zine) is a hold-in-your-hands art installation featuring Jen’s writing and mixed-media collage work, along with photography, quotes, and bits and pieces of creative whatnot. / Jen is the owner is Words by Jen, a graphic design and creative services company founded in 1993, based in Branford, Connecticut where she keeps house with a cat named Molly. She is a member of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, Branford Arts and Cultural Alliance (BACA), Connecticut Poetry Society, and the Guilford Art Center. / (COVER PHOTO: Conversation, Vanessa Bell, 1916)