"The way we listen to and tell human stories can reshape our reality."
Award-winning author, Coach, Speaker.
JEN KNOX is an award-winning writer of short fiction and essays, with work in such journals as Room Magazine, CutBank, Chicago Tribune, McSweeney’s Internet Quarterly, Saturday Evening Post, New Winning Writers, The Best Small Fictions, and elsewhere. Winner of the Montana Prize for the Essay, the San Miguel Essay Prize, the Press American Award for Prose, and the Steel Toe Books Award, her other honors include grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the Greater Columbus Arts Council and residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, and the Ou Gallery.
Once a high school dropout, Jen now holds degrees from Otterbein (BA), Bennington (MFA) and certifications from Harvard Business Online (Management and Leadership). Jen’s first historical novel, Radicals, will be published by Library Tales/Simon & Schuster late 2026. Her first novel, We Arrive Uninvited, is available from Steel Toe Books.
Jen is the founder / director of a holistic arts organization, Unleash Creatives, and maintains a Substack, The Resilient Creative, where she posts meditations and prompts and invites writers to join monthly creativity circles.
Awards:
"Volunteer," Essay. Honorable Mention, New Millennium Writers. 2025
"Blackouts," Essay. Pushcart Nominee, ELJ. 2025
AT WORK, Memoir: Finalist. Minerva Rising’s 2023 Memoir Contest; Finalist, Trio House Press 2024 Memoir Contest, Ohio Arts Council grant; Greater Columbus Arts Council; selections won the 2023 San Miguel Prize, earned finalist status in the 2023 Gordon Square Review Prize and the New Millenium Writing Awards; earned honorable mention in the Tom Howard/John H. Reid Contest
"Disembodied," Essay. WINNER, CutBank Montana Prize in Nonfiction (soon to appear in Issue 99); Finalist, 2022. Cutthroat Barry Lopez Prize for Nonfiction; Finalist, 2022. New Millenium Writing Awards; Finalist, Gold Line Press Chapbook Competition
WE ARRIVE UNINVITED: Winner of the Steel Toe Books Award; Winner, 2021. Winter Goose Publishing Award; Quarterfinalist, ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Competition; Second Rounder, Launch Pad Prose Competition; Redlist, Coverfly.
DANDELION GHOSTS. Flash. Winner, 2020 Flash Fiction Magazine Award.
THE GLASS CITY. Stories. Winner, 2016 Press Americana Award. Finalist, 2016 Calvino Prize from The University of Louisville.
Winner, Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Fiction. TO BEGIN AGAIN. Stories.
Semifinalist, 2018 Book Pipeline Competition. RESOLUTIONS. Stories.
Short stories.
Best Short Fictions, 2017. Anthology; Finalist, 2021 Women On Writing Essay contest; Finalist, Dundee Book Awards; Finalist, Glimmer Train Award; Finalist, Certy's Prize; Wigleaf's Top 50, 2012.
Jen's training and experience:
MFA, Bennington College, BA, Otterbein University
Credential in Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School
Lecturer, The Ohio State University
ICF-Certified Professional Coach
Former Lecturer, San Antonio Community College
Former Program Director, Gemini Ink
200hr through Uplifted™ Yoga YTT
Meditation instructor at Aura and Insight Timer
Science of Well-Being Course at Yale University
Reach out to discuss appearances and coaching
Novels
When Emerson was twelve, she was enamored by her grandmother Amelia and believed that what others saw as eccentricity or mental illness was instead a misunderstood gift. Five years later, hardened by her mother's suicide and worried that she might be destined for a similar fate, Emerson visits Amelia at The Lavender House, a mental health facility for the elderly, to learn more about the enigmatic women in her family who found either magic or madness in response to a world that often seemed too small to contain them. As Amelia's warped fairy tale emerges, buried stories are unearthed, and everything Emerson thinks she knows shifts as she begins to confront her own magical thinking and burgeoning feelings toward her best friend, Courtney.
Literary fiction, magical, historical; Winner, Steel Toe Books Award
Jen Knox’s The Glass City and Other Stories is a shrewd yet playful collection that explores the dangers of extremes with a subtle, skillful elegance. In these stories, weather becomes a mirror for the internal struggles of Knox’s indelible cast of characters. An aging acrobat looks for connectivity online as her city floods, two sisters are tasked to spread their mother’s ashes on flowers that no longer exist, a man’s scars become tattoos as he attempts to outrun truth, a reluctant host shares an island’s secrets, and families survive natural disasters that shake out lies and bury inhibitions. Re-released in honor of Zero Emissions Day in September 2023, this Revised Edition has been re-edited and contains several new stories that continue and expand the discussion around ecology, climate change, and the environment.
Eco-fiction, magical; Winner Press Americana Prize for Prose
Historical novel, inspired by the life of Victoria C. WoodhullIn nineteenth-century America, Victoria refuses the life prescribed for her. Spiritualist, newspaper publisher, Wall Street provocateur, and presidential candidate, she challenges the country’s most powerful institutions while navigating motherhood, scandal, and the punishing consequences of becoming a woman the world cannot ignore.
Nearly 150 years later, in rural Ohio, Avery is watching her own ambitions disappear. A struggling playwright caring for a mother whose memory is slipping away, she becomes consumed by Victoria’s unfinished story. But as the boundary between research and haunting begins to blur, Avery must confront what she has inherited—and decide how much she is willing to sacrifice to reclaim her voice.