Meet Jenn Givhan

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jenn Givhan. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jenn below.

Jenn, so great to be with you and I think a lot of folks are going to benefit from hearing your story and lessons and wisdom. Imposter Syndrome is something that we know how words to describe, but it’s something that has held people back forever and so we’re really interested to hear about your story and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

I’m not entirely sure that I’m over it, but I do remember a few years back, a male professor asked me about imposter syndrome during one of my readings at a college, and I’d never really heard of it or felt like I’d struggled with it–I’d just finished reading from a deeply personal novel I’d published, JUBILEE, which tells my story on the Mexicali border surviving a toxic relationship and miscarriage, through a surreal lens, drawing strength from my chingona goddesses like Frida Kahlo, Sandra Cisneros, and Emily Dickinson. So the idea that I might feel like an imposter never occurred to me. I was telling my story in my authentic voice, sharing my deep heart with the passion and strength it had taken to survive and which I hope to offer everyone who approaches my work with an open heart. Even though, now, yes, I do understand a bit more about what imposter syndrome is and how it affects us since it’s near impossible not to compare ourselves with our colleagues and heroes, especially with social media, literary awards and contests, differing publishing deals and all that–whenever I do begin to slip and forget my worth or start comparing myself with others I deeply admire, I return to my heart truth. My purpose. My passion. My voice. My story. Why I’m on this earth. I have weird and wonderful things to share. When I take off the socially prescribed mask and show off my own strange self, when I dig from that endless well within me, I often call the underbelly or, like in Stranger Things, the Upside Down, there’s absolutely no room for faking the funk or copping anyone else’s styles. Sometimes it takes lighting a candle and deep breathing or chanting or praying to scale the cave walls down into the depths of myself and my purpose, but once I’m down there, the imposter syndrome falls away entirely. And it’s pure love, pure terror, pure duende, pure joy.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

My passion is empowering girls/womxn/femmes and marginalized folks who have undergone personal, communal, and/or social trauma inhibiting them from reaching their true creative and energetic potential in reaching their dreams and transforming themselves and their environments/communities. As a Latina/Native woman who has undergone misogynistic violence and abuse, my passion is to uplift women to rediscover and hone their unique voices, to tell their stories aloud, and to be heard! I reach folks through my poetry books, novels, and I’m working on a memoir/self-empowerment book—as well as through my transformational coaching where I teach folks how to write their stories in whatever creative medium they feel most comfortable so that they can get their work into the world! Screenplays, poetry, memoir, fiction, essays or a combination of any of these creative media. I’m creating a safe-haven for community where marginalized folks can come together to write the change we need in our lives and communities!

Whenever a womxn tells me they’ve been transformed in any way by my books or mentorship, my heart sings that I am fulfilling my purpose. My work has been described as a magical real survival guide; that’s how I seek to empower others—showing the Spirit and strength in the worlds not always visible when we’re seeing how society has devalued and taught us to internalize racist, sexist, ableist perceptions of ourselves.

My most recent novel is RIVER WOMAN, RIVER DEMON, and my next novel, coming summer 2025, is SALT BONES!

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

1. Holding tight to my dreams & never letting them go.

2. Being willing to transform my perspective & pivot while still holding fast to my passion.

3. Making friends with discomfort & pain & folding them in as part of the process as I stepped toward the joy.

*

I always knew I wanted to be an author from the time I was a little girl. I told people I wanted to be a children’s book author. It wasn’t until my daughter came to me with an idea for a novel that she and I sat down and started writing a middle-grade novel together, and I became a children’s book author. Ever since I’ve been a professional writer (I published my first poem when my son was born, when I was twenty-three years old), I’ve been writing from an adult (mother) perspective. Writing a book with my daughter from a 13-year-old girl’s perspective was a lot of fun.

A few months before River Woman River Demon launched in October 2022, an editor from a major publisher emailed me that she had just finished reading my second novel, Jubilee, on the subway in New York and was still reeling from the experience—she said it made her cry and shared such kind words about it.

Fast forward to 2024, that major editor who happenstanced upon my largely unknown novel as her pleasure reading, fell in love with my writing, stayed in touch with me, and will be publishing my next two novels at my dream press—Mulholland (Little, Brown)!

We never know who our work will reach or what it will bring.

Someone on Amazon called Jubilee a *hidden gem.* That feels right. People who need it will find it. Like Jubilee herself in the book, she brings healing and restoration and abundance to those who find her and see her even when the rest of the world misunderstands her and what she represents.

Jubilee was the first novel I wrote. I dreamed it up in my early twenties while going through infertility and miscarriages, then planned it out in my head while driving home through the desert from my aunt’s funeral, my two kids in the backseat. I got a horrendous stomach bug on that drive and had to stop in Flagstaff for several nights although our bank account was so overdrawn we had to ask my Mom for the money to pay for it because there was no way I could make it home with how violently ill I was.

Two months later, when my daughter was a baby and still nursing around the clock and I was adjuncting, waking at 5 am to feed her before going to teach my 8 am freshman comp class at UNM, I decided to unleash the story that had been rattling around inside of me for a decade — and since I had no idea how to do it and no money for help — I used the energy of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) to challenge myself to write the whole damn thing in 30 days.

I did it.

Still hard to figure out how, but I did it.

I’d type while my daughter was nursing on her Boppy pillow, which I’d use to prop not only her but my laptop across my chest and belly.

She’s thirteen years old now and still finds the sound of clacking away at the keyboard soothing. It was her lullaby.

It would take almost a decade until Jubilee was published. I’d fight for her relentlessly after countless rejections and dozens of major revisions. Three agents.

Publishers who would say Jubilee was too dark to sell as women’s fiction — and don’t get me started on that. I’ll need another whole post and then some to unpack all that. Suffice it to say, women’s and mother’s experiences shouldn’t be relegated to a corner of genre nor squashed into something uplifting or marketable. And triple that for women of color and our experiences.

It took finishing the next novel, Trinity Sight, which was still rejected by most of the major presses — before an editor at Blackstone Publishing saw my heart in that novel, fell in love with the story and my badass mama protagonist, and Jubilee came riding upon her skirt.

I published Jubilee during the lockdown.

A poet acquaintance heard I wasn’t having a book launch and was distraught and offered to host a Zoom launch for me through her small, indie press.

Although that event was pure joy, and I’m so grateful for my small circle who have stood by me all these years, I mostly felt like I’d failed Jubilee.

She was out there in the world, but she was too personal to me to market.

How do we even begin to market our deepest hearts in a capitalist circus arena?

I couldn’t do it.

I’m often associated with my transparency and vulnerability, but Jubilee felt most tender — even after all these years.

I did my best, but mostly I just watched her from afar, floating out into the world, praying she’d find those who needed her.

My next novel River Woman, River Demon was hands-down my most commercially successful—although it still couldn’t pay the bills, not by far.

I was drowning in debt.

I won’t go into potentially triggering detail, but my mental health continued to wobble precariously.

Still, I wrote Salt Bones.

Through chronic illness, adjuncting for a below-the-poverty-line salary, mothering, and trying to stay alive—

I wrote.

I had a new agent whom my dear writer friend guided me to after my previous agent dropped me for “complaining that my white colleagues were making more than me on their books” and not listening to her advice about what to write next (I’ll have to post another time more about this and the middle-grade novel I’ve been revising passionately and relentlessly with my daughter, fiercely advocating for and never giving up on

—Pi Luna and the Turquoise Palace—Pi has her own Jubilee story).

My agent and my family lifted me up through finishing Salt Bones.

Even though I’d earned an academic gig at UNM, teaching creative writing for the first time, it wasn’t stable — they’d only hired me for the semester, I found out. And my debt went unpaid.

But that semester, through homeschooling my daughter and teaching both a poetry class and a fiction focused on magical realism, I finished Salt Bones, sent it to my agent, and she helped me polish it up to send out once again—my heart up for grabs.

And I hoped, once again, that this book would help me break through the barriers that still felt… not insurmountable or impenetrable since I’d published three novels and five poetry collections by now…

It’s just…

We write because we have to.

We have something inside us that needs to be said.

And we’ll say it again and again in every iteration it comes until…

What?

It leaves us in peace?

We die?

We’ve lived a writing life and at least we can journey to the beyond content that we never shut up or gave up no matter how many times life’s mercurial cruelty or capitalism or racism or humankind’s propensity for ridicule and judgment and and and kicked us in the motherfucking teeth?

But too many writers give up believing in ourselves and our truths along the way— and why not? It’s the sane thing to do.

My mom has been a mental health nurse all my life and she’s told me countless times (not as advice or anything, merely as observation, and perhaps even a note on her own choices)—

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

So we writers are insane! Ha! We already knew that!

[I just fact-checked the insanity quote. Apparently this truism is attributed to Einstein! Ha! Of course! I’ll need to post another thread about how Einstein haunts me! Hello Rosa’s Einstein! …

I can’t wait to delve into this more…

This will take me down the rabbit-hole of Quantum Insanity & Unpredictably! How fun! More to write about! See? 🤣

The writing life at work! How meta! What joy!

I was feeling a bit kicked in the teeth again writing all this out for you and there the Universe goes piquing my curiosity and dangling that writing string!

I’ll take insanity every damn time!

And. Who knows if my mom was quoting a popular witticism or if the DSM handbook actually says anything of the sort! The answer to that question will take me down another rabbit hole & I’ll never finish this post—although, of course, I didn’t bury the lede and you already know what’s coming!]

Mulholland said YES!!!!!

And they’re paying me more than I’ve ever been paid in my life!!!!!!

Oh, I have so much more I want to tell you but I’ve stretched your patience to the very limit, I’m sure!

Please, please, loves—

Go do what you love!

Write what you want!

Create something beautiful or monstrous or both!

Put your heart on the table.

It’s not about money but money means [in this insane society] we survive to create another day.

And if yours hasn’t come yet — whatever tangible yes you’ve needed — those triple cherries 🍒 in the slot machine’s three eyes —

It’s coming.

It’s on its way.

Believe it.

Claim it.

Don’t give up.

You’re not any more or less insane than the rest of us fools who come to this earth not of our own volition and hope anyway to make something of our brief stay—

Go create!

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

They read to me. Period.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jennifergivhan.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenngivhan/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenn.givhan.3/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@jennifergivhan7192