Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Jenkins.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I started writing after college as a young mom with two little kids at home. Writing was intellectually stimulating and solely my own (as few things were in that stage of life). I wrote during nap times and in the precious nighttime hours when the house was still. I finished my first novel a year later and have been writing ever since.
Research into the world of publishing taught me that to be appealing to a publisher. I would need a “platform” from which to sell my books. In other words, I needed to be active on social media. The last thing I wanted to do was to self-promote. To make a long story short, I joined ranks with an incredible group of aspiring authors to form a writers’ group. Jo Schaffer-Layton, Lois D. Brown, Tahsha Wilson, Margie Jordan, and James Lewis became a second family to me and we decided to approach the concept of an author platform differently with a mind to give back to young writers from our community.
I remember walking into a meeting I had somehow arranged with UVU’s Community Education Department. I was an unpublished, 28-year-old dreamer and essentially said, “Teens need this program and Writers Cubed (our writers’ group name at the time) is the organization to do it!”
We didn’t even have a legal business at the time! I still laugh when I recall texting the group after my meeting and saying, “Quick! We need to form a company so we can finish the paperwork with UVU!” We called the conference Teen Author Boot Camp. No one could have possibly known that this little idea of giving back to the community by validating young voices would change all of our lives so drastically.
In 2011 we held the first ever Teen Author Boot Camp with about 130 teens in attendance. Today, Writers Cubed, Inc, a federal 501c3 nonprofit, runs six different national programs that support young readers and writers across the country. TABC is going strong as our flagship program and is the largest teen writers conference of its kind in the nation, attracting nearly 1000 teens to Provo, Utah, every Spring. We’ve expanded to include other programs such as Tween Author Boot Camp, the national Teen Readers Choice Award, Teen Poet Society, TABC Classroom, and perhaps most notably, the Book Drop program- an initiative that strives to get free books and author visits to Title One schools across the country. This program is led by the brilliant NYT bestselling author, Jennifer A. Nielsen.
I went on to publish seven young adult fantasy novels and one nonfiction, but my work with this growing non-profit has been the most rewarding aspect of my professional career to date.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Ha ha! So much failure!
Two Examples:
The publishing industry taught me to persevere in the face of extreme rejection, and that practice at failure shaped me tremendously.
I practiced the art rejection for about five years while failing to publish four books. I credit my amazing writers’ group for giving me the community to keep making the attempt. I’ve printed out those rejection letters (there are at least a hundred!) and keep them as a physical reminder that “no” is really just “not yet” and that you literally can’t fail if you don’t stop trying.
Another obstacle that rocked my world was my parent’s divorce that took place at about the time my little fledgling non-profit was taking off but a few of my dear friends also chose to pursue other worthy goals in their life. Those who remained were left to decide if this non-profit could survive with just four people to run it.
To fully grasp the problem, you have to know that we took our non-profit status to literal extremes back then, rolling 100% of our conference profits into the following years’ conference. We couldn’t afford to hire someone to take on their unpaid responsibilities. The jobs that needed to be filled were financial, legal, and tech-driven and required a ton of training and more volunteer hours from a group of women already running on burn-out.
It seemed as though everyone was leaving me, even though, logically I respected the needs of those making the choices that were made.
As much as I didn’t blame my group or even my parents for their respective separations, I remember feeling as though I stood in a path of a tornado back then. I remember feeling that I had two choices:
1. To let everything go and walk away from the damage as well.
2. To try to learn to manage the new complications of my family life AND work like never before to figure out how to run the legal, financial, and technical side of running a business.
I wasn’t the only one scrambling. The four of us who remained took on a lot that year.
I love to climb mountains, but I have to admit that I get a little scared the day before I do. I worry that my body will not cooperate. I anticipate just how hard it will be to scale a 4000 ft elevation gain and the endurance of a 12-hour ordeal will tax me. Doing hard things can be terrifying! But I’ve pushed through that fear enough times over the years to recognize that the most incredible, worthwhile pursuits of my life came on the other side of extreme fear.
So I learned how to be an accountant of sorts. I learned how to run and update a website back when coding played a more aggressive role in the process. I learned to file our taxes and I finally stepped into the leadership role I’d been avoiding in the organization. I learned how to delegate without apologizing. I started taking it upon myself to seek out strategic partnerships that would help us on the journey. Again, I failed all over the place, just as in publishing. But by this point in my writing career, I’d “summited enough peaks” to consider that failure a familiar, if sometimes unwelcome, friend.
I knew that for us to be sustainable, we would need to break our model of just relying on our writers’ group to help us. We drew strength from partners such as The King’s English and Owl Hollow Press and began seeing our company as more than just a conference.
The covid shutdown happened exactly two weeks prior to the biggest conference we had ever anticipated. That “failure” of having to pivot by refunding registrations and tearing down tens of thousands of dollars of investment nearly broke us, but we rallied again by allowing the hardship to force us to embrace a global outreach and tapping into new technologies to amp up our national game through virtual events. It was another scramble to another peak, another chance to cut our losses and walk away from something that we knew was making a small difference in the lives of teens that so often didn’t have the community and outlet they so desperately craved.
When things got really hard, I thought of those teens trapped in their homes. I knew they needed their writing more than ever, and just couldn’t bring myself to stop fighting for them. I wasn’t alone in that desire and am so grateful for the support of a team during that crazy time.
Four of our current six programs were born during the most tumultuous time in modern history. Perseverance through adversity became a recipe for success. Covid forced me to learn how to fundraise. We made more key partnerships in the form of Phillip Chipping, an entrepreneur whose knowonder! program benefits young readers coming from great poverty and disadvantage, Jennifer Nielsen, and my mentor and friend, Donna Milakovic who introduced me to the hurdles of fundraising.
As I write this, I currently have my usual anxieties about hiking the backside of Timpanogos with some very fit friends tomorrow, BUT I have climbed that mountain many times before and I know I can do it again and only need to focus on the rewards that come from extreme sacrifice, because they are many, and have made me and Writers Cubed, Inc what it is today.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
I work as the Executive Director of Writers Cubed, Inc, a 501c3 non-profit supporting young writers and readers in three key ways:
1. Help children and teens develop a love of reading and writing.
2. Provide books and positive author encounters for the economically disadvantaged.
3. Create a safe and validating community fostering creativity and achievement with measurable and desirable education outcomes.
We are most known for the Teen Author Boot Camp which is a conference held at the Utah Valley Convention Center with national and some international online attendance. TABC is a full-day event held on March 25, 2023 at the Utah Valley Convention Center in Provo, where creative teens gather and learn from some of the most popular published authors in the country.
Teens can set their schedule and enjoy interactive workshops, writing contests, a national teen short-story anthology published with Owl Hollow Press and other activities in a fun and educational atmosphere. They’ll be given tips and instructions on how to level up their writing skills and even navigate the road to publication.
Our goal is to scholarship 200 teens to attend TABC this year with the help of local sponsors and grants.
Other programs of Writers Cubed, Inc that support young writers:
-Tween Author Boot Camp for children ages 9-12. Our next conference is on Oct. 25 at the Provo City Library with Brandon Mull as the keynote speaker.
-TABC Classroom- This is an incredible resource for teachers looking to supplement their writing curriculum. TABC Classroom Edition offers years of curated video content filmed at past TABC events loaded with exceptional writing advice and tailored to the national common core. Each video also comes with a full lesson plan for educators and individuals alike.
-Teen Poet Society- A national society with an annually published teen poetry collection, quarterly readings, and more.
-Teen Readers Choice Awards-The Teen Readers’ Choice Awards helps to promote reading and literacy in teens by highlighting their favorite literature of the past two years. Unlike other awards, this award is created for teens and the winners are decided by teens. Each year, the award will celebrate the diversity, challenges, beauty, and growth that comes from being an adolescent, and the books and authors who have made an impact on those lives.
Our flagship charitable arm (100% non-revenue generating) and the most important effort is our Book Drop Program.
Book Drop brings highly-acclaimed authors to Title One schools across the United States. The authors donate a powerful and motivating assembly that helps students of all ages and backgrounds fall in love with books and reading. Book Drop then donates one copy of the author’s book to each student in the school.
This program has the greatest impact of anything we are doing right now because it’s reaching young children who desperately need the resources we offer.
New research across the globe shows that the best predictor of future education achievement and life success is reading ability—specifically, being an engaged reader. Studies found that reading scores are the best predictor of post-secondary attendance, even above other socio-economic factors. Put simply, a successful future is linked to the love of reading.
But not all children have equal access to books. In middle-class neighborhoods, there are an average of 13 books for each young reader. However, in high-poverty areas, the ratio is approximately 1 age-appropriate book for every 300 children! How can children fall in love with books if they never meet any?
Dick Robinson, the President of Scholastic Books said, “As long as children do not have equal access to books, we will never live in a truly equal society.”
Our goal is to bring meaningful, inspiring author visits and signed books to 35,000 children this school year.
How do you think about happiness?
My family. I adore my husband and three children. They have brought me more joy than I could ever imagine. I love cheerleading and taxi driving, and all that comes with my role of wife and mother. I’m content with the title of “Clint’s wife” or “Casey, Libby, and Boston’s mom.”
Professionally, my answer really isn’t so different.
When people introduce me, they always tend to lead with the fact that I’m a published author. As rewarding as that has been, it pales in comparison to the work I do in the lives of my adopted “children” through my charitable efforts.
My greatest joy comes from reading an email from a teen who was just named a Sterling Scholar for English or just got their first publishing deal. Sometimes it’s the look of a shy teenager’s face as they accept an award on one of our stages. The idea that my team’s efforts to put that light in a young face is extremely validating and almost always has me tearing up. It really is such an honor to get to do what I do!
Pricing:
- $100 for your teen to attend Teen Author Boot Camp on March 25th.
- Donate just $10 to Book Drop to sponsor a child with our Book Drop Program.
- $35 to attend Tween Author Boot Camp on Oct 25th.
Contact Info:
- Website: teenauthorbootcamp.com
- Instagram: @teenauthorbootcamp
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Teenauthorbootcamp/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/teenauthorbc
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TeenAuthorBootCamp
Image Credits
Writers Cubed staff
