- Website
- Jenniferbattisti1977@gmail.com
- 702-673-0932
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Community
Jennifer Battisti
- Literary Arts
- Visual Arts
Jennifer Battisti is a lifelong Nevadan. She is a writer, artist, teaching artist, mother, and a woman in recovery. Her writing has been anthologized in ""Legs of Tumbleweed, Wings of Lace,"" Sagebrush and Sandstone, Las Vegas Writes, and ""Where We Live,"" an anthology of writing and art in response to the tragic Las Vegas shooting in 2017. Her worked has also appeared in The Desert Companion, Witness, Brevity, Western Humanities Review, Split Lip, Thin Air, Wildsam Travel Guides and more.
In 2016, Nevada Public Radio interviewed Jennifer about her poetry. She was twice voted best local poet by the Desert Companion. In 2023, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her nonfiction. Her writing and collage art have been on display in exhibits for Nevada Humanities, The Collage Collective and Clark County Public Art. Her first chapbook, ""Echo Bay,"" was released in 2018 and her full-length collection, Off Boulder Highway was released in 2021 (Tolsun Books). She has been a teaching artist and co-director for the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project in Clark County and taught poetry and storytelling workshops for Henderson Libraries and SPRAT. Twice a year she facilities an Artist’s Way creative cluster for people who’d like to cultivate creativity in their lives.
School & community workshops
The Alzheimer’s Poetry Project and Poetry for Life: This intergenerational program is designed to teach students to perform and create poetry with older adults with an emphasis on patients diagnosed with Alzheimers’s and dementia. In addition,students will gain a better understanding of how Alzheimer’s affects people, person-centered care, and creative aging and creative expression in older adults.
Desert Jewel Journal writing: This all levels workshop illustrates the therapeutic value of using a journal for free-writing and container writing, which is especially powerful for dislodging memory in those affected by trauma. Students are asked to respond to prompts of their choice in a safe space, with the concept of we don’t heal in isolation.
The Artist’s Way Creative Cluster: This 12 week course is open to anyone hoping to dissolve artistic blocks and cultivate creativity in their lives. We meet once a week to connect and discuss the experience of the book: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.
Cut, Paste, Poem: This hybrid workshop marries visual and literary arts to teach artists how to write ekphrastic poems (poems that respond to art). Artists will create collages with provided materials,then write poems in response to their own or others’ artwork with an option for a final collective exhibition and poetry reading.
Connecting Through Poetry and the Senses: This interactive workshop includes metaphor dice, a poem prompt deck, small group collaboration and time for sharing work. Student artists will use their five senses to explore memory, metaphor and point of view.
