Alabama Authors Directory

About Jeanie Thompson

Genres: Nonfiction, Poetry

Available for: Readings, Workshops, School Programs, In Person, Remote

Bio: Jeanie Thompson, a native of Decatur, Alabama, is the founding director of the Alabama Writers’ Forum, a statewide literary arts service organization located in Montgomery. She retired in September 2023. Jeanie is also a member of the poetry faculty with the Naslund Mann low-res Writing Program at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. She continues to advocate for creative writing for justice involved youth.
Jeanie attended the University of Alabama where she received her M.F.A. in …Read More Creative Writing and was founding editor of Black Warrior Review literary journal.
She has published five collections of poems, and three chapbooks, and has edited a collection of memoirs by Alabama authors, The Remembered Gate, with Jay Lamar. Jeanie’s latest work, The Myth of Water, Poems from the Life of Helen Keller (UA Press, 2016), was a finalist for the 2016 Foreword Indie Poetry Book Awards. She has recently published essays about her work with photographers and visual artists.

Works: The Myth of Water: Go Into Your Life, a words and music collaboration with Grammy-nominated producer and guitarist Larry Mitchell. (Opelika, Alabama, 2025). CD/Booklet available at jeaniethompson.com or download the album at …Read More jeaniethompson.bandcamp.com
My Gaia, poems and photographs by Jeanie Thompson and Wayne Sides (7 Points Press, Florence, Alabama, 2025). Available at lulu.com or order from jeaniethompson.com
The Language of Objects: A Creative Writing Handbook, edited with Marlin Barton and Daniel DeVaughn, 2022. Second edition.
The Myth of Water: Poems from the Life of Helen Keller (University of Alabama Press, 2016)
The Seasons Bear Us: Poems (River City Publishing, 2009).
The Remembered Gate: Memoirs by Alabama Writers, (University of Alabama Press, 2001), edited with Jay Lamar.
White for Harvest: New and Selected Poems, (River City Publishing, 2000).
Witness: Poems, (Black Belt Press, 1995).
How to Enter the River: Poems, (Holy Cow! Press, 1985).

Awards: Joanne Sloan National Award for the Encouragement of Writing, Southern Christian Writers Conference, 2025.
Albert B. Head Legacy Award, Alabama State Council on the Arts, for work as a literary arts advocate and award-winning poet, Spring …Read More 2024.
Artist Fellowship in Literature, Alabama State Council on the Arts, 2016.
2016 Foreword Reviews INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalist in Poetry (The Myth of Water; Poems from the Life of Helen Keller).
Finalist in the Richard Peterson Prize for Poetry, The Crab Orchard Review, Spring 2014.
Annual Alumni Arts Award, the University of Alabama, College of Arts and Sciences Leadership Board, Spring 2003.
Walter E. Dakin Fellowship in Poetry, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, 2000.
Benjamin Franklin Award from the Publishers’ Marketing Association (poetry/literary criticism category) for Witness, 1996.