Full circle: Jen DeGregorio’s path from poet to creative writing faculty
Associate director of creative writing releases new book, reflects on career and education
As an undergraduate and master’s student, Jen DeGregorio admits she wasn’t that involved in “extracurriculars”. It took a few more years, but when she got to the doctoral level at , they became her life.
“I was super engaged in a way that I never had been as a student before. I wanted to make up for everything I didn’t do when I was an undergrad,” she said. “The PhD program at really provided me an outlet to try everything, and I found myself being so involved. I was part of or led every single major graduate student initiative in the Creative Writing program at the time.”
As a student, DeGregorio served as director of the Poetry Project, a literary service program that offered free poetry workshops to adults, teens and children in Broome County, N.Y. She codirected the 2019 Writing by Degrees creative writing conference and Literati Reading Series and served as both a poetry editor and the inaugural web editor for Harpur Palate.
Now, DeGregorio serves as the associate director of creative writing at and teaches undergraduate creative writing as a lecturer. She joined the faculty after receiving her doctorate from in English with a concentration in creative writing.
These days, her work reflects many of the initiatives she once led as a student, as well as the administrative work it requires to keep the Creative Writing Program running.
“When I’m not teaching or developing a syllabus and planning my lessons and mentoring students, I help manage the undergraduate and graduate programs while supporting Director Tina Chang in manifesting her vision for the program,” DeGregorio said. “I also help organize the Distinguished Writers Series, which invites critically acclaimed authors to each year.”
While it may seem like DeGregorio’s present career is perfectly aligned with her graduate studies, her path has been anything but linear.
DeGregorio pursued a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park. But upon entering the journalism program, she realized that she missed the creative arts, so she decided to take an introductory poetry class in the English Department. Ultimately, she decided to double major in English with a concentration in creative writing.
“My poetry class was a revelation. It was amazing to be able to concentrate in poetry for an entire semester at that level and be exposed to contemporary poets that I’d never heard of before,” she said. “I felt so excited to be studying poetry in the manner of a writer.”
Yet she still stuck with journalism as a long-term profession. A few weeks before graduating, she secured a job at a small newspaper in Baltimore, where she worked for more than two years, before moving on to New Orleans and The Times Picayune, a major metropolitan paper. But something had never felt quite right about life as a reporter, DeGregorio said. So when the Picayune staff were offered buyouts in the wake of the 2008 financial crash — in late 2009 — she took it as a sign to return to her love of poetry and to apply to master’s degree programs.
Wanting to move closer to her childhood home of New Jersey, she moved to Brooklyn, New York, and applied to MFA programs in creative writing. She ended up at Hunter College (CUNY) in Manhattan, where she earned her master’s degree. Her time at Hunter inspired a new passion for teaching, so — after several years of juggling positions as an adjunct faculty member at Hunter and other colleges — she decided to look for a funded PhD opportunity. That is what, finally, brought her to in 2017.
“I liked that the degree was in English, with a concentration in creative writing and an opportunity to work on a dissertation — I saw it as an opportunity to work on my first book,” DeGregorio said. “But most importantly, it required me to root myself in scholarship. I wanted a deeper intellectual connection to poetry as an art form and as a scholar, not only a creator.”
Yet even then, she still made one more stop before her return to and a professional position. After earning her doctorate in 2021, she spent more than two years as an editor at Poets & Writers Magazine, one of the oldest and most widely circulated magazines for creative writers in the United States.
“Some of the nation’s most acclaimed authors write for the magazine or are featured in the magazine in some way. My work there gave me a unique perspective on the industry as well as the chance to work directly with some very talented authors. It also strengthened my skills in several areas that are relevant to the work I do now,” she added.
In addition to working for the Creative Writing Program, DeGregorio continues to write and publish her own poetry. Her debut poetry collection, What to Wear Out, was released in April by Get Fresh Books.
“ is directly responsible for my book; a lot of it came from my dissertation,” says DeGregorio, who has also published poems in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and many other publications.”
Next, DeGregorio hopes to expand a section of her dissertation that did not appear in her first book into a second collection, further cementing the legacy of in her life. In the meantime, she hopes to inspire students and other members of the university community to follow their literary passions while ensuring the program she manages is as strong as it can be.
“Because of my history as an alumnus, I’m deeply and personally invested in the success of the Creative Writing Program and the students. I’m highly motivated to do my best to keep the program shining,” DeGregorio said. “I want to make this little corner of the university the best that it can be. I want people in the future to feel that they really benefited from it in the way that I benefited from it.”