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Jenna Devany Waters

Writer. Mother. Activist. Wanderer.
Master list-maker; minor revolutionary.
She/Her.

Piles of Books

Home: Welcome

Recent Essays

Seagull with its beak held wide open against a blue background

"A Passed-Down Story"

The Citron Review

"This is just a story of a story, a version of the version my mother told to me. Later I learned the term disassociation. Then: I was a deer, a fish, a burrowing owl. I had so many tricks of transformation."

jellyfish floating in black water with tentacles streaming

"Testimony from the Church of First Kisses"

JMWW

"What I remember most are not her words but the heat of them, the way her voice would drop and grow huskier, the way she would slow down her speech so each word sat poised like an entire world on her lips."

loose tea buds next to metal strainer

"Navigating Loss, with Tea and Empathy"

MUTHA Magazine

"My eyes track the changed landscape as I follow my daughter to the kitchen, surveying the rooms as if assessing damages after a storm. One table lamp down in the living room; three furniture dollies gone from the hall; the espresso machine and milk frother unmoored, carried off on the retreating waters of my failed marriage."

evergreen branch with frost

"Winter Solstice: Teaching My Kids To Greet The Darkness And Invite In The Light"

Your Tango

"As the last streaks of a light dip below the windowpane, we take turns cutting squares from the flattened dough, twirling them between our palms into a hundred miniature globes. Each ball is wrapped around a single wish, spoken aloud in turn, then dipped in butter, sugar, and cinnamon, before it is at last tossed into the pan."

Work

Home: Contact

Jenna Devany Waters is a queer writer, teacher, and single mother extraordinaire. After 12 years of deadlifting strollers down subway staircases in Manhattan, she has recently relocated to a 120-year-old farmhouse in Vermont’s Green Mountain National Forest, where her nearest neighbors are cows, cornfields, and coyotes. Jenna's work is forthcoming in Orion, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Under the Sun, has recently appeared in The Citron Review, JMWW and MUTHA Magazine. She is occasionally funny on Twitter.

Contact

devanywaters@gmail.com

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