Jennifer Passaro is Coeur d'Alene's inaugural poet laureate. Born in Idaho’s Wood River Valley, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Montana in 2011, with an emphasis in creative writing, particularly poetry and fiction from the western United States and Native American literature and cultural studies. Her experiences include working on trail crews in the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana and out of the Fernan Ranger District on the Idaho Panhandle National Forest. She worked as a reporter for the Coeur d’Alene Press covering Kootenai County and has contributed to the Sandpoint Reader, the Trestle Creek Review, and Opt West Literary Magazine, among other publications. Most recently, Jennifer has been a writing instructor at Emerge, where she led poetry workshops and performed at events like Lit Crawl CDA.
