Jodi Vander Molen lives in Madison, Wisconsin (United States), where she worked for 17 years as a fundraiser, poetry editor and proofreader for The Progressive magazine. She represents Wisconsin Humanities on the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission, has served as a judge for Madison’s annual Moth story-telling GrandSLAM, and has taught young National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) authors the art of finding the “Monsters Within Our Pens.”

Jodi grew up on a small farm, and has kept a journal for nearly 40 years. She is a member of Arts + Literature Laboratory (ALL) and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, and serves as Operations Manager for the literary group Indigenous Nations Poets. She is founder of the @Just1Haiku project, created in April 2020 to introduce the therapeutic effects of poetry to the general public during pandemic isolation. Her weekly Tuesday haiku and more work can be found on Instagram @jvwords.