about

Jen Bowen (she/her) is a writer, arts instructor, and editor, whose essay collection Lightworthy: Essays on Love, Justice and Art, is forthcoming from Milkweed Press in 2025. Her work has received a Pushcart Prize, The Arts and Letters Prize, The Tim McGinnis Award, and has appeared in The Sun, The Iowa Review, Orion, and Kenyon Review, among others.

Jen is the Founding Director of the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop (MPWW). She teaches creative writing in prisons across the state of Minnesota, and occasionally at local colleges. She also edits creative prose and conducts interviews. She’s proud mother of two sons. Jen lives in St. Paul, a block in any direction from sidewalk poetry and snow.