FOUNDER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Jennifer A. Minotti
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
For the past 25+ years, Jennifer A. Minotti has dedicated her professional and personal life toward working for the betterment of society.
In 2020, Jen founded the Journal of Expressive Writing in order to provide a place for sharing expressive writing, believing that we need this space on a fundamental, human level and that whatever we are feeling is a link to what others are feeling across the planet at any given moment.
From 2015-24, Jen was Writer-in-Residence at the Center for Women's Health and Human Rights at Suffolk University in Boston, MA, where she facilitated Women's Writing Circles as a means to merge her passions for expressive writing, positive psychology, women’s health, and social activism. She was also Editor of the anthology, Who Am I Today: 40 Women Answer the Question (Suffolk University, 2022).
For 17 years prior, Jen worked at Education Development Center (EDC)—a global non-profit working to improve education, health, and economic opportunities worldwide—in a variety of technology, research, writing, and leadership roles for projects that focused on health and human development, online professional development, literacy, bullying-prevention, special education, urban education, science, assistive technology, and inclusive schooling practices.
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Jen is a graduate of Boston University (B.S.) and Columbia University (M.A., M.Ed). She is a Certified Instructor in Journal to the Self (JTTS) and Guided Autobiography (GAB) and holds certificates in Wholebeing Positive Psychology, Transformative Language Arts Foundations, Distance Education, and Herbal Studies. Jen is also passionate about spreading gratitude. She co-created The World's Very First Gratitude Parade, helped establish Gratitude Day in the City of Cambridge, MA, and has been regularly spreading gratitude through her Gratitude Jar project since 2014.
Jen's writing, research and poetry have been published widely in numerous refereed journals, literary publications, and anthologies. But mostly, she loves uplifting others' voices.
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Read Jen's interviews in:​
OPEN MIC PRODUCER & HOST
Kelly DuMar
Open Mic Producer & Host
Kelly DuMar is a Boston based poet, playwright, and daily blogger who has been a leader of creative writing organizations—in person and online—for 30 years. Kelly’s passion for personal development and writing as a practice of art and healing, grow from her love of literature and drive to help all individuals embrace a creative practice as a foundation for a meaningful life. Her philosophy about teaching and coaching is simple: Your stories are not only meaningful, they are beautiful, and they deserve to be written, crafted and shared.
Kelly has published three poetry chapbooks, girl in tree bark, Tree of the Apple, and All These Cures, and her poems and photos are published in Bellevue Literary Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Tiferet, and more. Her plays are published by dramatic publishers, including Youth Plays and she is author of a nonfiction parenting book, Before You Forget–The Wisdom of Writing Diaries for Your Children.
Kelly has been active for over two decades in promoting the voices and stories of women writers on stage. She founded and produced the Our Voices Festival of Boston Area Women Playwrights, held at Wellesley College, for twelve years. As a leader on the Board of the International Women’s Writing Guild, Kelly produced the annual IWWG Boston Writing Retreat, the week-long summer Play Lab, and created the bi-monthly IWWG Open Mic feature online. A former psychotherapist, Kelly is a Fellow in the American Society of Group Psychotherapy & Psychodrama, and she is a certified psychodramatist. Kelly also leads expressive writing workshops online for the Transformative Language Arts Network where she has served on the leadership council. Kelly’s daily blog, #NewThisDay, features nature photos from her daily walks on the Charles River with reflections on her writing life for the past six years. Her website it kellydumar.com
You can learn more about Kelly’s published poetry here and photography here.
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT
Catharina Coenen
Production Assistant
Catharina Coenen came to the United States from Germany as a Fulbright Scholar to attend graduate school. After earning her PhD in Botany and Plant Pathology she worked as a researcher in Germany and now teaches biology and introductory writing classes at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania.
Catharina’s essays and poems have appeared in The Threepenny Review, The American Scholar, The Christian Science Monitor, Best of the Net, LitHub, Electric Lit, the Cincinnati Review and other literary magazines. Catharina is the recipient of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, the Flash Nonfiction Prize awarded by The Forge, the Appalachian Review’s Denny Plattner Creative Nonfiction Prize, a Creative Nonfiction Foundation Science as Story Fellowship, multiple Pushcart nominations, and Residencies at Hedgebrook and at Millay Arts. Her first book, Unexploded Ordnance, explores how the experiences of her mother, grandmother, and aunt during the bombings of World War II in Germany shaped her life and reverberate in the present.
Catharina has supported women’s voices through serving as a teacher and board
member for the International Women’s Writing Guild and as a production assistant for the virtual Open Mic series offered by the Guild and the Journal of Expressive Writing. Her website Botany for Storytellers compiles resources for writers who want to bring more plant knowledge to their creative work and for botanists who want to learn about writing and publishing for a broad audience.
You can learn more about Catharina’s creative work at catharinacoenen.com