Jennifer Givhan

Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican-American and Indigenous poet and novelist from the Southwestern desert. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices, she is the author of five full-length poetry collections and three novels, most recently River Woman, River Demon, chosen for Amazon’s Book Club, as a National Together We Read Library Pick, and featured on CBS Mornings. It also won a Silver Medal for the International Latino Book Award in the Rudolfo Anaya Latino-Focused Fiction category. Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, POETRY, Tri Quarterly, The Boston Review, The Rumpus, Salon, Ploughshares, and many others. She’s received the Southwest Book Award and Cutthroat’s Jo Harjo Poetry Prize, among many others. The 2023 Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at The University of New Mexico, Givhan lives in Albuquerque with her family.

ESSAY

Baby Fever

By JENNIFER GIVHAN

That I might never be anything but alone in my own body. In my own mind. That no one could ever make me feel whole.