About Me

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Welcome to the website of Jonie McIntire, a poet and literary advocate in Northwest Ohio.

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First thing you need to know, other than it’s lovely that you’ve landed here, is how important building literary community is to me.

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When I came to Toledo in my early twenties, I found a community that felt closed. One that had hidden cultures you had to seek out. In finding the feminist community, the anarchist community, the literary community, I started to see how desperately people needed to connect to and support each other. In the poetry community, particularly, I found intersections of all groups and people – the academic, the homeless, all races and sexes and identities, different abilities and political notions. Everything interwoven. 

So my important work became creating platforms for area artists, finding venues for their poetry and workshops to help them grow. And by bringing artists from around the country to share their craft, by being challenged by the artists here in Toledo, my craft has grown and been refined. The growth and maturity of Toledo poetry mirrors my own, in some ways. We hit dry spells, we reinvent ourselves, we have boon years of frantic activity. We keep trying. We do better together.

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My first two chapbooks were Beyond the Sidewalk (NightBallet Press, 2017) and Not All Who Are Lost Wander (Finishing Line Press, 2016). My third chapbook, Semidomesticated, was the winner of the Red Flag Poetry 2020 Chapbook contest and was released in March 2021. I host a monthly poetry reading series, Uncloistered Poetry, and am the poetry editor for Of Rust and Glass. My current project, called PopUp Printing, involves creating small chapbooks to raise funds for immediate needs in Northwest Ohio. Not only have I led countless writing workshops and poetry events, I also have poems published in journals across the country and even stamped into cement in Toledo, Ohio as part of the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo’s Sidewalk Poetry series.

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