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"Storytelling is about exploring the nuances of life, the anguish within beauty and wisdom within pain. When we hold our stories inside, they weigh us down. When we release them, we find not only our voice but perspective and a different way of engaging with the world."
 

Jen Knox is an educator and storyteller who teaches writing, leadership, and meditation. She is the author of We Arrive Uninvited (Steel Toe Books Award Winner) and The Glass City (Press Americana Prize for Prose). Her short fiction and nonfiction can be found in Chicago Tribune, Five South, The Saturday Evening Post, and more. The recent recipient of CutBank’s Montana Prize in Nonfiction and Honorable Mention for the 2023 Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest, Jen is currently working on a series of essays on work. She recently received a grant from the Ohio Arts Council to support a collection of essays on her day jobs from ages fourteen to twenty-two.

 

After dropping out of high school and wandering aimlessly for a while, Jen found purpose in storytelling. Writing led her to earn a BA from Otterbein and MFA from Bennington. Now, after teaching writing for over a decade and managing a leadership program at Ohio State University, Jen began to combine meditation techniques, leadership research, and the transcendent power of creativity to launch Unleash Creatives, a holistic arts organization in the Midwest.

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Buy Jen's new novel, WE ARRIVE UNINVITED, here.

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Author Bio:

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The co-owner of Unleash Creatives, Jen Knox is an educator and storyteller who teaches writing, leadership, and meditation. 

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Her books include the short story collections The Glass City (Hollywood, CA: Winner, Prize Americana for Prose), After the Gazebo (New York City, NY: Rain Mountain Press), and Resolutions: A Family in Stories (AUXmedia). 

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Jen was the 2020 Editor's Choice recipient for the Flash Fiction Magazine's competition. Her writing has been nominated for the Pen Faulkner, The Best of the Net, and a Pushcart. Her short stories have been featured in textbooks, classrooms, and both online and print publications around the world. Her fiction appears in The Best Small Fictions 2017 (Braddock Avenue Books), The Adirondack Review, Sivana East, Chicago Tribune's Printers Row, Chicago Quarterly Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Crannog, Cutthroat Magazine, Elephant Journal, Fairlight Books, Fiction Southeast, Juked, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, MJI News, Poor Claudia, The Saturday Evening Post, The Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly, NPR, Short Story America, and Sequestrum, among over a hundred other publications. Read many of her stories here.

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Jen has had the pleasure to read her work for Gemini Ink in San Antonio, Texas; Eastfield College near Dallas, Texas; Otterbein University in Ohio; Busboys and Poets in Washington DC; Columbus Arts Festival in Ohio; KGB in New York; Cervena Barva Press in Massachusetts; AWP in California and elsewhere.​

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The company Jen co-owns is Unleash Creatives, a holistic arts organization that provides writing, mind-body coaching and art services. For visual arts services, additional workshops, and more, go to unleashcreatives.net

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Mission and Vision:

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I write to explore. I teach to empower.

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Storytelling is about exploring the nuances of life, the anguish within beauty and the wisdom within pain. When we hold our stories inside, they weigh us down. When we release them, we find not only voice but also perspective.

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I am an educator and storyteller who teaches leadership, writing, and meditation - sometimes all at once. Every day, I write with the aim of asking new and better questions. I teach with the aim of helping others to do the same.

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My vision is to continue on, words to page, and to provide creativity coaching and mind-body services that enable you to break blocks, create the life you want, and make the art you were meant to make.

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Jen's holistic training and experience:

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