Jennifer Lobsenz
Youth Programs Director (she/her)
I’m SAL’s Youth Programs Director, which means I get to collaborate with all the amazing people who touch the WITS and Youth Poet Laureate programs. This looks like placing and supporting professional writers in year-round public school residencies, building and maintaining relationships with community partners, and advocating for the importance of making creative writing opportunities available to young people.
I am a born and raised Seattleite! I grew up just blocks from the SAL office on Capitol Hill and enjoy the daily walk through memory lane when I come in to work. I start a lot of sentences with, “This actually used to be…”
When I’m not at work, I’m often biking to a park where my kiddos can clamber around. We spend a lot of time at Seward, our collective favorite park in the city. When I can swing it, I really enjoy making pottery, going on walks with friends, attending multidisciplinary art events, reading, and hosting semi-structured dinner parties (I like connecting people!). But if we’re being honest, I’m very much in a high volume packing lunches and kissing scraped knees stage of my life.
I’m a huge fan of Simone Weil; a copy of Gravity and Grace lives on my desk and I check in with it often. I appreciate so much about her ability to think and feel and actualize. When I engage with her work, I feel like my own abilities sharpen.
An awesome Sunday for me would include being woken by the enthusiastic cuddles of my two daughters, Aura and Vela, eating breakfast as a family, romping around a local park, taking a picnic lunch to Kubota Gardens, reading poems and stories together, and having some friends over for dinner.