Craft Your Voice.
The author of fifteen books, Jehanne has spent over two decades developing her own voice on the page, in the classroom, as well in creative and academic spaces.
With a BA in the “Great Books” from St. John’s College, two MFAs (one in poetry and another in creative nonfiction), and a PhD in English, Jehanne offers her mentees a rare combination of creative expertise, scholarly training, and an understanding of academic cultures as well as what it means to be a public intellectual writing for a broad audience.
Jehanne created Craft & Inquiry to provide mentorship for poets, essayists, and academics who wish to take their writing from the blank page to a rough draft to a polished final product that is ready for publication.
Jehanne also specializes in the art of the personal statement for applications to college, graduate school, law school, and medical school. Throughout her career, she has served on admissions and scholarship committees. Jehanne has studied the strengths and weaknesses of student writing and knows firsthand what makes for a great application essay.
Below you’ll find information about some of the services she offers.
During the most difficult moments of drafting this book, I would look up from my computer screen and remember the cup of black tea cooling on the kitchen countertop. There it was—the mug waiting for me, a pale wraith of steam rising from its surface. Already, I could imagine the taste of a gingersnap cookie dipped in the dark liquid, the tannin and spice, the sharp crumbs like sand dissolving into sugar on my tongue.
The Wounded Line: A Guide to Writing Poems of Trauma
Foundations of the Craft
Intensives for poets and essayists focused on learning the essentials lessons of how to compose poetry and lyric prose.
- An Introduction to Poetry: A 6-week practicum focusing on image, voice, and form.
- A Formal Feeling: A 6-week practicum in rhyme, meter, and fixed forms.
- Beyond the Basics of the Line: Hourly sessions focusing on how to marry form and content in your poems.
- Adventures in Creative Nonfiction: Hourly sessions in learning how your essays can tell their truest stories.
- The Wounded Line: A 6-week practicum inspired by Jehanne’s craft book, focusing on practical strategies for writing compelling poems that engage in trauma.
Manuscript & Masterclass
Advanced mentorship for the development of book-length manuscripts.
- The Poetry Manuscript: A 6-week practicum focusing on key elements of putting together a poetry collection, including the entries, exits, and architecture of your book.
- Full Manuscript Consultations: Mentoring packages that include structural analysis, line-editing, and publication advice for poetry and nonfiction manuscripts.
- The Writing Year: A year-long, private mentorship in poetry or nonfiction that explores your craft, engaging with tradition, and ending with a sustained, creative project. Ideal for nontraditional writing students who crave the support and guidance of an MFA.
Academic Coaching
College prep. Guidance for navigating undergraduate and graduate applications, and the academic job market.
- College Admissions Essays, Grad School Statements of Purpose. Plus Med School & Law School Personal Statements: The how-to’s of creating effective application materials at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including medical school and law school.
- Fellowship Applications & Artist Statements: Guidance in creative writing fellowship materials as well as how to compose artist statements.
- Departmental Life: Advice about academic spaces, including strategies for navigating tenure and flourishing within departmental cultures.
It is rare to find a poet who is also a stellar teacher of poetry, rare to find a person who is so accomplished and who genuinely seeks to bring out the best in others. Jehanne Dubrow is such a teacher, such a person. She has nurtured and guided me, a novice poet, in everything from poetic forms, to poetic theory, to line-by-line analysis and editing, to better understanding the publishing world, through the publication of my first collection, and the editing of my second. I am a stronger writer and thinker because of her. Anyone would be lucky to have her warm presence and sharp mind guiding them along their writing journey.
—Maya Bernstein, author of There Is No Place Without You
Each of my mentoring sessions with Jehanne was rich with recommended craft resources and model poems, provocative questions, and suggested approaches to revision, along with lessons she has learned over the years from her own mentors. Although my work with Jehanne took place over just a couple of months, the takeaways have lasted—I still test out Jehanne’s suggestion to “try it as a sonnet” at some point in the process of writing almost every poem!
—Rebekah Wolman, author of What the Hollow Held