Meet Jen Breach
This blog began in 2006 as an exercise, a discipline, a meditation for me, a way to think out loud while I was trying to think on the page in my books for young readers. Over the years it has taken on its own trajectory and become a record of sorts—a patchwork quilt of my reflections on crossing borders of all kinds as they relate to writing and teaching. It has come to include the reflections and opinions of others who create books for children and young adults.
In 2024-25, I’ll have 4 new books out, each with its own timeline of edits, copyedits, and a series of proofs, and I am not getting any swifter. Spent years multitasking and living to the thrill of the looming deadline. Can’t do that any more. So rather than shut the blog down and retreat for months on end, I’ve decided to get help.
Photo courtesy of Jen Breach.
Meet Jen Breach, newly minted graduate of the MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults, where I flapped my teaching wings for all of 16 years. Jen (they/them) is a queer and nonbinary writer of more than 30 books for kid readers.
In Jen’s own words:
Born and raised in rural Australia, Jen has worked as a bagel-baker, a ticket-taker, a cocktail-shaker, a code-breaker, and a trouble-maker. The best job they ever had was as a writer, which is what they now do in a tiny row house in South Philly.
Jen’s first post, a Process Talk interview with Martha Brockenbrough, goes live later today. Through the rest of 2024, Jen will manage guest posts and Process Talk interviews here on Writing With a Broken Tusk. They will line up author/illustrator interviews and invite and coordinate guest posts.
In between, I’ll continue to post my commentary on all things related to crossing borders in writing for young readers. And because Jen will take care of those other time-consuming admin essentials, we can keep the blog going at its usual pace, even while I’m in edit-copyedit-proofing mode.
With any luck, I can also return to the ghosts and the kid characters who have been waiting patiently for me, trapped in the muddled draft (all drafts are muddled, mine anyway) of a middle grade work in progress. I’m especially grateful to Jen because their help means I’ll have time to leap back into the novel’s mix of ghosts and history, with a dash of ancient Indian literature, all of it set in a fictional town in Northern Virginia.
Welcome, Jen❤️
