Jessie Lendennie was born in Blytheville, Arkansas. She is co-founder (1981) and Managing Director of Salmon Poetry, for which she has commissioned and published over 600 volumes of poetry as well as a select list of literary criticism, drama, fiction, memoir and essays. Her own publications include a book-length prose poem Daughter (1988), reprinted as Daughter and Other Poems in 2001 and a collection of poetry, Walking Here (2011). Her poetry has also been anthologised in Irish Poetry Now: Other Voices, Unveiling Treasures, The Attic Guide To The Published Works of Irish Women Literary Writers and The White Page/An Bhileog Bhán: Twentieth-Century Irish Women Poets, among others. She regularly attends the AWP Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in the US, where Salmon is a prominent presence, having been shortlisted for the Small Press Publisher of the Year AWP in 2015. In 2012, she opened The Salmon Bookshop & Literary Centre in Ennistymon, Co. Clare, a vibrant hub for literary events, for writers, readers, students & academics, and the base from which Salmon Poetry runs its publishing operation.
