School of Writing, Literature, and Film

Jennifer Richter

By Katie Livermore, CLA Student Writer - October 2, 2024

Jennifer Richter doesn’t remember the first time she said she wanted to be a poet, but it must have been a phone call to her parents during her freshman year of college.

Born in a northwestern suburb of Chicago in 1969, Richter, a newly-tenured professor of poetry in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film quickly fell in love with the big city. Her “charmed” childhood included her younger brother and parents whose support gave her the freedom and confidence to follow her dreams.

Though her parents weren’t writers, Richter was always enamored by the art and figured the way to be a writer in the world was by being a journalist. From Chicago, Richter moved to Indiana to explore a new part of the country and study journalism at Indiana University.

But she wasn’t a journalism major for long.

After taking a creative writing class, her graduate teaching assistant, Tony Vallone, encouraged her to pursue English as a major and to consider poetry as a career.

“He was the one who pulled me aside and said, ‘you know, if you want to do this with your life, you can,’” Richter said. “I think about that all the time as a teacher now.”

Richter feels lucky to have supportive parents, as many of her students say they feel pressured to study subjects that lead to more stable, money-making jobs. When Richter told her parents she wanted to pursue poetry, they were all for it.

“I've known all my life that if I tried something and failed, they'd support me, and if I succeeded, they'd celebrate me."

Her first book, Threshold, is dedicated to both Vallone and her parents.

From Indiana University, Richter went on to pursue her Master of Fine Arts in poetry in yet another new place–Pennsylvania State University. She became a graduate teaching assistant, like her mentor Vallone. Richter immediately fell in love with the combination of teaching poetry to her students and encouraging them to be creative while writing poetry herself.

“It all settled in really fast: ‘yep, this is what I want to do with my life–I want to be a writer’ and ‘yep, this is what I want to do, too–I want to teach,’” Richter said.

Afterwards, Richter was selected for the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. All they asked of her was to write poetry and take workshops with their extraordinary faculty–and paid her for it. After the two-year program, she stayed for the next four years as a lecturer. During that time, she discovered her passion for making poetry more accessible for those who wanted to learn–or could benefit from learning–the art.

Each week, she volunteered in San Francisco teaching poetry to recovering substance abusers at the Delancey Street residential center. Richter said it felt profound to teach college students on a picturesque college campus then immediately drive to San Francisco and a population that didn’t have access to the art of poetry and could benefit from the healing process it evokes.

“Teaching residents in juvenile hall and other alternative populations has always felt really important to me,” Richter explained. “It felt important to be in the university setting, but to also recognize what a privilege it is, and that not everybody gets to do that, so I would bring poetry to people who wouldn't otherwise get a chance to study it.”

Richter met her husband, English Professor Keith Scribner, at Stanford, and moved to Corvallis in 2000 so he could teach at Oregon State University. In the process, they had a daughter and a son. Now, after teaching 13 years at OSU herself, Richter is a tenured professor.

Always donning colorful, patterned clothing, Richter is a bright light for students in Moreland Hall. When Richter is teaching, it doesn’t matter what classroom she’s in–it feels warm, comfortable and creativity simply bounces off the walls.

“There's a really wonderful curiosity that my students show up with,” Richter said. “It's something that I work on a lot in a classroom–creating an atmosphere of trust and respect so that they feel like a community.”

Richter created the graduate internship program for students in the Master of Fine Arts of writing program, where students worked with young adult inmates at the Oak Creek Youth Correctional Facility in Albany. In 2020, that internship ended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was clear to me really quickly with any of these groups that they have so much to say, and they're just waiting for somebody to ask,” Richter explained. “It's really, really inspiring, because they write these incredible, courageous poems that–many of them–I won't ever forget.”

Along with teaching, Richter has published three poetry collections so far, and her third titled Dear Future was released in May 2024. The book follows the idea of constant “shattering” and “healing” and Richter describes it as “one long love letter” to her family.

“The book feels to me like a portrait of the ways that we as communities, we as families, we as individuals, cycle through periods of shattering and healing, and the joy inherent in the book comes from the cyclical nature of how we are all, at any given time, struggling with something, but we get to the other side,” Richter explained.

Within all three books, Richter intertwines themes of family, illness and joy, all of which she’s experienced during her life.

Following the idea of teaching poetry to conjure emotional healing, Richter has always used her own writing to work through her personal experiences.

“I was very sick for a number of years, and the first two books are about navigating my identity as mother of two little children and partner and patient and poet,” Richter explained. “The poet side often got nudged out because of the kids’ schedules and my doctors appointments. At some point, I did very consciously decide, for my own mental well being–I need to write about this, and not necessarily for anybody else.”

Along the same vein, Richter also teaches a class called Narrative Medicine: Bodies, Behaviors, and Beliefs (WR 320) that is open to all students. It is a core course for the OSU Medical Humanities Certificate and focuses on poetry and personal essays written by health professionals, caretakers, and patients who tune into and process their emotions through writing. Narrative Medicine is offered fall term and Dear Future is available online and in local Corvallis bookshops.