Work samples

  • The Distraction of Conscience_3.pdf

    This is one of several essays in my collection-in-progress, Catalog of Lies. This essay examines our relationship to and with the natural world.

  • Catalog of Lies

    This is the title essay of the collection-in-progress, Catalog of Lies. This essay examines the intersection of deceitful tactics used by con artists, emotional abusers, and divisive politicians. 

  • Fear & Ammunition: Reflections on the 20th Anniversary of 9/11

    In 2021, the country was in the midst of a pandemic. This essay reflects on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and considers what it means to connect as humans, both then and now. 

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About Jen

Baltimore City   2024 OTW Artist  

Jen Grow’s debut collection, MY LIFE AS A MERMAID, was winner of the 2012 Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Competition. Her work also earned the 2016 Mary Sawyers Baker Award. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, Other Voices, The Sun Magazine, The GSU Review, Hunger Mountain, Indiana Review and many others including the anthology City Sages: Baltimore (City Lit Press, 2010). She co-authored the book Seeking the Spirit (Morehouse Publishing, 2006) with… more

See $20,000 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize Winning Portfolio
View Jen's Resume
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Catalog of Lies: A Collection of Essays

Catalog of Lies, a collection of essays, is inspired by my father's work investigating con artists and grifters. In each of these essays things are not as they appear. The essays, which combine memoir with research and larger current events, examines the stories we tell ourselves when we're confronted with environmental and political issues, homelessness, immigration, the beauty industry, aging, and grief. Several essays have been published including the title essay, "Catalog of Lies," as well as "Fear and Ammunition," and "The Distraction of Conscience."

  • Small Offerings

    "Small Offerings," originally published in Hippocampus Magazine, examines home insecurity.
  • Containers

    "Containers" was originally published in Faultline Journal.
  • Distraction of Conscience

    Originally published in About Place Journal, this essay examines our relationship to the environment and considers what it means to communicate with the world around us. 
  • Catalog of Lies

    This is the title essay of the collection-in-progress, Catalog of Lies. This essay examines the intersection of deceitful tactics used by con artists, emotional abusers, and divisive politicians. 
  • Fear & Ammunition: Reflections on the 20th Anniversary of 9/11

    This essay was originally published in Across the Margins in 2021. 
  • About Place Journal: Infinite Country Issue
    About Place Journal: Infinite Country Issue

    This is the cover of About Place Journal: Infinite Country issue, in which the essay "Distraction of Conscience" was first published.

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    • The Road to Copacabana and the Psychology of Writing

    This nonfiction work in progress is about the psychology of writing. Why do writers and other creative people become creatively resistant or blocked? Craft books and self-help books don’t address the gap between creative pursuits and brain science.This book identifies the mental, emotional, and physiological roadblocks that stall us or make us lose our creative motivation. With this project, I'm combining my work and knowledge as a writer and writing teacher with my work as a licensed psychotherapist to explain the brain science behind why writers can become blocked or resistant to writing. It also takes a look at the personal, cultural, and historical nature of creativity and creative motivation, exploring how our beliefs, expectations, and perspectives affect our ability to create. Using an integrative approach, this book helps writers work through their resistance to improve their creative motivation by drawing on several psychological theories including Polyvagal Theory, bilateral stimulation and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Cognitive Behavioral Theory (CBT), Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Narrative Therapy. If we can’t navigate the emotional, spiritual, and physical task of writing, then our heroes can’t navigate the storylines we’ve dreamed for them.

    • The Old Incapacity

      "The Old Incapacity" an early chapter in The Road to Copacabana, looks at the brain science of procrastination and how we can work with it instead of against it. 
    • The Benefits of Not Knowing Your Audience

      This chapter was originally published in Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts.

    • My Life as a Mermaid

    "Like the watery bodies it evokes, the prose in these stories is translucent and sparkling... Each story is an exploration of motherhood, wifehood, daughterhood, or neighborhood: the relationships that make up and strangle the characters, who are all, in their own ways, drowning... One story in particular rises above the others: "What Girls Leave Behind," in which an alcoholic mother loses her young girls...Its raw immediacy is equal parts story and slice of pain and will leave you gasping." -Kirkus Reviews

    "Winner of the Dzanc Books Short Story Competition, this stunning collection introduces an important new voice in American fiction. The characters—among them a suburban wife, an alcoholic mother, two homeless men, and an injured veteran—grapple with being voiceless and feeling trapped." -Amazon

    "Jen Grow's stories are subtle, sophisticated, closely observed, and full of deep perception and real heart." -- Madison Smartt Bell

    "Jen Grow’s astonishing collection explores what we think we want, what we think we need--and what we end up with, in language as burnished and gorgeous as a ruby. Filled with a myriad cast of dreamers, housewives and lost souls, all desperate to renovate their lives--or at least understand them-- these stories are both a meditation on escape and a testament to that fragile miracle--hope.” -- Caroline Leavitt, New York Times Bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You

    “These sharp, beautiful stories are gem-like explorations of loneliness and longing, cast in prose that is rich with dark humor, danger, and sadness. My Life as a Mermaid is an enchanting collection, and Jen Grow is a thrilling new talent.” – Laura van den Berg, author of The Isle of Youth and Find Me

    "Jen Grow writes with tremendous range and a gorgeous depth of feeling, elevating the story form to where it belongs. There is nothing slight in these stories and each is a world expertly, painfully rendered, leaving me feeling at once less alone in the world while opening me up to the myriad lives of others. An absolute gift of a book.” -- Paula Bomer, author of Inside Madeleine

    "In My Life as a Mermaid, Jen Grow tenderly illuminates the world of frozen fish sticks, cheap liquor, truck-cab homes, game show television, and post-war traumas. There is grace in each one of these unforgettable and moving stories."
    -- Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Wonder Bread Summer

    • Jen Grow
      Jen Grow
      A reading in August 2015 at Starts Here! An Ivy Bookshop Reading Series at Artifact Coffee, hosted by Jen Michalski.
    • I Get There Late- Excerpt from MY LIFE AS A MERMAID
      " “Listen,” I finally say, “I want to apologize about everything back then. I’ve really changed a lot in the last few years.” I don’t mean it, but I say it because I want them to let me in. I have nowhere else to go. The dog is looking at me through the screen door. He wags his tail."
    • The Rumpus- Review of MY LIFE AS A MERMAID
      "By showing us women at their most intimate moments of pain and loss—in their most disturbing honesty—Grow’s collection highlights the ways we ask women to be more than they are. Her deft writing provides the reader with complex, intimate human portraits." - Heather Partington, The Rumpus
    • American Book Review- Review of MY LIFE AS A MERMAID
      "These are stories that will stand up to re-readings; stories that will read fresh 30 years from now." - Judith Powell, American Book Review
    • My Life as a Mermaid- Title story from MY LIFE AS A MERMAID
      "I get another letter from my sister who is in Honduras riding mules and skidding around the muddy mountain roads in a pickup truck. The roads have curves sharp enough to invite death, sharp enough to see yourself leaving."
    • Still at War- Story in MY LIFE AS A MERMAID
      They said, “We understand your concern. We want to help if we can, but don’t call us unless it’s an emergency. Psychotic episodes are normal,” they said. “They’re not emergencies. Your husband might start drinking too much. Don’t call us about that either. Don’t call us unless he wakes you up in the middle of the night with his hands around your neck. Or with a knife at your throat. Or if you pass out. Something like that. That’s when you should call. But don’t call us unless that kind of thing happens. He’ll have flashbacks, that’s totally normal,” they said.
    • Small Deaths- Story in MY LIFE AS A MERMAID
      I always loved the shoes in your closet, standing in rows, as though invisible women were waiting to dance.
    • Book Cover Image and Blurbs
      Book Cover Image and Blurbs
      "Jen Grow's stories are subtle, sophisticated, closely observed, and full of deep perception and real heart." -- Madison Smartt Bell // "Jen Grow’s astonishing collection explores what we think we want, what we think we need--and what we end up with, in language as burnished and gorgeous as a ruby. Filled with a myriad cast of dreamers, housewives and lost souls, all desperate to renovate their lives--or at least understand them-- these stories are both a meditation on escape and a testament to that fragile miracle--hope.” -- Caroline Leavitt, New York Times Bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You // “These sharp, beautiful stories are gem-like explorations of loneliness and longing, cast in prose that is rich with dark humor, danger, and sadness. My Life as a Mermaid is an enchanting collection, and Jen Grow is a thrilling new talent.” – Laura van den Berg, author of The Isle of Youth and Find Me
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