writer-IN-RESIDENCE
February 8-24, 2027
Justine Defever
Justine Defever is a Michigan-based poet and professor. Her work has appeared in North American Review, Great Lakes Review, The Metropolitan Review, and other anthologies. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Arcadia University and an MA in Higher Education in Student Affairs from Northern Michigan University.
When she’s not writing, Justine enjoys making quilts, reading regional poetry, and painting bricks to look like book covers in her literary-themed garden. Her work can be found at justinedefever.com.
Artist Statement
My reverence for the state of Michigan is a recurring theme in my writing. In 2025, I began working on a chapbook of poems centered on locations across the state. When I learned of the Good Hart Artist Residency, I knew there would be no better place to immerse myself while working on this project. The untamed beauty of northern Michigan, Good Hart’s ecological diversity, and the region’s commitment to historic preservation provide a fitting backdrop for this collection. Whenever I spend time along the shores of the Great Lakes, the meditative and hypnotic landscape becomes a catalyst for my writing.
As a Writer-in-Residence at the Good Hart Artist Residency, I am generating new poems inspired by this region while revising in-progress poems. I describe myself as a poet of place, and solitude is essential to how I witness and translate landscape into poetic narrative. I grew up on a family farm nearing its sesquicentennial on my mother’s side, and I am a third-generation descendant of immigrants on my father’s side. Both of these histories influence my work through thematic ruminations of land and memory that anchor me between generations who have called Michigan home. I look forward to reading and writing in this region in February of 2027 while continuing to reflect on the stories and places shaping my collection.