Jo Bear (she/they) is a queer and disabled poet, scholar, and educator. Their poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Shō Poetry Journal, Channel, West Branch, The South Carolina Review, Blue Earth Review, Poetry Ireland Review, ROPES Literary Journal, and elsewhere. They are a current MFA candidate in poetry at North Carolina State University and a Zoeglossia Fellow. Jo holds an MA in Drama & Performance Studies from University College Dublin and a BA in Theatre and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies from Franklin & Marshall College.

Jo’s scholarship centers around the intersections of colonization, gentrification, national identity, embodiment, and disability justice. Their MA thesis entitled “Aesthetics and Access: Disabled Spectatorship in Contemporary Irish Performance” is an autoethnographic exploration of the liberatory possibilities born from disability-centered performance and design models in Irish performance spaces.

As an educator, Jo is interested in cripistemologial pedagogies that foreground disabled ways of knowing as a means of rooting their practice in curiosity and care. They have taught as a tutor, a guest teaching artist, and a teacher of record across Performance Studies and English courses in Ireland and on Turtle Island.