The JaxbyJax Literary Arts Festival turned ten years old in 2023, and we’re pleased to start our second decade in 2024 with a brilliant new Director: poet Brooks Decker. 

​As a writer, artist, and mental health therapist in Jacksonville, Brooks Decker has been featured in local zines and literary magazines. She published her first chapbook, Purge & Bloom, in 2023. She has spent the past seven years providing art and poetry lessons to institutionalized youth and adults with a local non-profit and is the current host of Second Sunday with Poets and Authors at Happy Medium Books in Riverside. 

When she isn’t working or creating, you may find her at the thrift store, her front porch, or moseying along the St. Johns River.