I am a professional writer, performer, and educator who has devoted my career and creative life to exploring the power of writing and creative community to catalyze individual development as well as healing from trauma. In 2003 I founded Writing Ourselves Whole, a nonprofit organization that creates a powerful, safe community in which writers bear witness to one another as they give voice to their stories.
I am the author of Writing Ourselves Whole: Using the Power of Your Own Creativity to Recover and Heal from Sexual Trauma (Mango, 2017). Widely anthologized, my writing has appeared in many anthologies and other publications, including Under the Gum Tree, Matador Review, Nobody Passes, The Healing Art of Writing 2010, make/shift, Visible: A Femmethology (Vol. 1), Best Sex Writing 2008 and Sinister Wisdom. I am the co-editor of Sex Still Spoken Here (with Dr. Carol Queen and Amy Butcher; San Francisco: CSC Press, 2014). I received my BA in Cognitive Science from Dartmouth College and my MA in Transformative Language Arts from Goddard College, and I have recently completed my MFA in Creative Writing (concentration in Creative Nonfiction) at San Francisco Sate University.
I have presented at Stanford University, Wesleyan University, the University of California at Davis, Dartmouth College, the University of California at San Francisco, Brown University, Goddard College, the University of Oregon at Eugene, Evergreen State University, Southern Oregon University; the Power of Words/ Transformative Language Arts Network annual conference; the Femme Conference; Survivorship and the Survivorship annual conference; San Francisco Women Against Rape; Bay Area Women Against Rape; Community United Against Violence; and at many other community organizations, bookstores, and schools. I have produced or helped to produce numerous showcases for writers to perform their work publicly, the largest being a collaboration with San Francisco Women Against Rape to present Artists Against Rape.
Example talks:
- Erotic Writing as Liberatory Practice (at UC Davis) — Please note: This talk opens with a sexually-explicit reading: http://webcast.ucdavis.edu/flashv2/?file=UWP/2011/Jen_Cross_11-15.flv
- Using Writing to Transform Trauma (UC Davis): http://webcast.ucdavis.edu/llnd/314b7237
Jen in conversation:
- Interview with the Arts and Healing Network about writing as a healing and transformative practice: http://artheals.org/projects/arts_healing_podcast.html?fb_17380826_anch=17380852
- Jen Cross on the Sex Gets Real podcast, discussing healing trauma, dissociation, & the erotic: http://sexgetsreal.com/ep210
Specialties: creative writing, creative nonfiction writing, essay writing, article writing, editing, writing workshop facilitation, creating a safe space for transformative writing and work, Amherst Writers and Artists method, writer's coach, recovery through creativity, sexual violence, spoken word
