Staying as resistance.
Speaking as Rebellion.
Storytelling to challenge stigma, bridge ideological divides,
and rewild cultural narratives.
Jen’s experience
Jen has seen firsthand the spread of extremism across her home landscape in rural North Idaho. She’s witnessed the passage of inhumane laws—and how their harm is reinforced by fear, stigma, and silence. People stay quiet so they don’t become targets, leaving others to bear the consequences.
In such a climate, people feel alone in their beliefs and hesitate to speak, limiting the possibility of connection or collective response. This sense of isolation compounds harm.
However, Jen offers a blueprint for community-based narrative activism that is accessible to all. Prior to her advocacy, she spent a decade running chainsaws in the forests of North Idaho as an arborist. It’s an unlikely path that underscores her central premise: We are all potential social justice activists.
The key is simple: telling your own story—in the face of fear, in defiance of shame, and in service of connection. Stories build community. Stories shape culture. The stories we tell become the scaffolding of our world.
on the front lines
Jen has been a featured speaker at Smith College, her story has appeared at Off-Broadway Theater 555, and her activism has been covered in The Guardian, Politico, Ms. Magazine, and more.
But more importantly, she is often in small towns across Idaho, building a culture shift made of stories.
Learn more about how you can bring her words and her work to your community.
What Jen Does
Speaking
Jen offers keynotes and workshops for universities, communities, and organizations interested in navigating difficult conversations.
Talks include Storytelling and Cultural Rewilding in Red America, which helps audiences understand how stories shape culture and public belief by reducing stigma and opening dialog.
Professor Carrie Baker at Smith College said of this presentation, “My students were rapt. Jen made a deep impression on them, inspiring them and guiding them.”
Writing & thought-Leadership
Jen’s essays and a forthcoming book explore the intersection of people and place, as well as the power of storytelling to shift culture.
A Field Guide to Staying: Essential Activism for Women’s Rights in Red America (Broadleaf Books, May 2027) braids storytelling with a lived blueprint for regional activism, offering readers a way to practice belonging where they are. It is a narrative about remaining rooted and wildly alive in a place relentlessly demanding domestication.
“I now clearly see that silence is a poor coping mechanism. It protects perpetrators under the guise of our own self-preservation.
“We don’t rock the boat in hopes of keeping the more dangerous passengers calm. We don’t rock the boat out of fear of drowning, having forgotten our ability to float. Having forgotten the weightlessness of water.”
—excerpt, A Field Guide to Staying
Narrative Activism
Jen is the founder and executive director of The Pro-Voice Project, using storytelling to reduce stigma and shift public dialogue. The years she’s spent developing narrative-based programming in rural spaces—including stage productions, writing workshops, films, and community conversations—informs the rest of her work. PVP is at the heart of her understanding of the power of personal story.
In The Seattle Times, Jen explored the intersection of her advocacy and motherhood, writing:
“The most vulnerable among us — and those who help them — are being made to feel like criminals. For the having and handling of sex. As if sex weren’t the thing biology made our bodies to do. As if sex was something everyone does but half of us are shamed for. Which it is.
In Idaho, girls and their support networks are firmly in the crosshairs. Crosshairs in red, the color of dishonor. Red, the color of states setting their sights on women’s rights.
Welcome to the post-Roe world, where politicians are in the business of legislating shame”
Sign up & Learn More
Get excerpts and updates on staying, storytelling, and the work of cultural rewilding.
“jEN IS A POET JOURNALIST.”
— Terry Tempest Williams, author —
“MY STUDENTS WERE RAPT. JEN MADE A DEEP IMPRESSION ON THEM.”
— Carrie Baker, author and Smith College professor —
“SHE IS A WRITER ON THE RISE……STYLISTICALLY AND PERCEPTUALLY AKIN TO THE LATE ELLEN MELOY.”
— M. John Fayhee, author —