Karen Jahn taught as a tenured English professor for twenty-seven years specializing in writing, 19th c British, and then African American literature. During this time she presented talks on these specialties at many conferences from in Mississippi to Greece and published essays on Dickens and Wideman. Participating in an NEH Seminar on the Blues at the University of MS grounded her love of this music as a way of seeing. She has used this perspective in reading, teaching, and writing for the past decade. After retiring she began writing personal essays and teaching creative writing enhanced by an MFA degree from Vermont College of Fine Arts. An essay will be appearing in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine and she has several essays in circulation. She is working on memoir called Surrender Blues and teaching a course on The Harlem Renaissance.
