Welcome! I’m glad you’re here.

This site is largely a repository of my creative work and is still under construction. Eventually you’ll find all of my published essays, as well as poetry and song lyrics. In addition, I plan to post my Spirit Box Project (a video essay), as well as journal entries that address subjects I’ve explored for decades: literature, spirituality, nature, place, and—more recently—gender. These are the subjects I tend to write about. I invite you to have a look around and check in from time to time.

I grew up in Wausau, a mill town in Central Wisconsin. My parents are from the Iron Range of Upper Michigan, just over a hundred miles north of Wausau.

 I spent much of my youth visiting the Range and the South Shore of Lake Superior. In 1981, I earned my BA in English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. For a decade afterwards, I wrote and traveled, while working as a cook and cab driver. In 1992, I earned an MFA from Cornell University, with an emphasis in creative nonfiction. After graduating, I secured a license in adult education and over the next 30 years taught in nonprofits and a state prison, primarily serving nontraditional students preparing to enter the workforce or earn their secondary degrees. In 1996, I married Josée—a woman I met while at Cornell. She and I raised two fine sons and have since seen them off into the world. While our boys were growing up, I continued writing, and publishing sporadically, primarily with Orion. In 2020, I had the remarkable experience of discovering that I’m transgender; I now identify as a woman. In 2024, I retired from my adult education career and now work full time on my creative life.

Over the years, I’ve nurtured a variety of interests that include biking and motorcycling, hitchhiking, running, downhill skiing, and backpacking. I’ve studied the acoustic guitar, drawing and cartooning, tarot, dream-work, the Western long sword, geology, and other natural sciences. I’m an avid reader.

I’ll close this bio with a note of humility. Art and age have taught me that all things are passing and brief. Even Shakespeare travels on a planet that will disappear; regarding the cosmic effects of obscurity, I’m light years ahead of the bard. What can be pleasing about my own work is that in its obscurity. it invites a cheerful experience of happenstance that comes when a reader discovers for himself or herself something worthwhile on the margins: one life (yours) has happened upon the creative expression of another life (mine). Like thousands of other artists, I’ve devoted much of my life to consciously exploring what it means to be a soul on this earth passing through flesh. The considered way that I express myself is unique, just as all considered self-expression is unique, and perhaps the way that I say this or that will be just the thing you need to hear. Who knows? In any case, I have created my literature as honestly and artfully as I’m capable of doing. Because I’m not sure I’ll publish a book, I’ve decided to post a majority of my creative work here. I want to honor it simply by putting it out there. If you happen across something that inspires a question or comment, I’d be glad to hear from you – and I’ll respond.

I wish you well!

Jennifer Marysia Landretti