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jen-bryant.bsky.social
@jen-bryant.bsky.social
Writer, runner, stray cat whisperer. Midwestern transplant with Southern roots. Words in The Sun, Ms., BUST, Cleaver, Matter News, Hip Mama, & more. 2025 Ucross Fellow. Editor @muthamagazine, book reviewer @publisherswkly, & CNF reader @mudseasonreview.
My little essay was nominated for a Pushcart Prize! 💞 Thank you, HerStry!

#pushcart
November 24, 2025 at 1:35 PM
So excited to have a new CNF piece up at @thewoolfofficial.bsky.social! 🔗
November 23, 2025 at 5:44 PM
Spending the past two weeks as a fellow at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming was a dream come true. Thank you for the gift of space and time! #ucross
November 21, 2025 at 9:00 PM
My home state showed up and showed out at the polls. Sic semper tyrannis! 🌊
Damn, Virginia. Good job electing Spanberger (the first female VA governor!) and Hashmi (first Indian-American & Muslim elected official in VA!). Happy for my home state. ♥️
November 5, 2025 at 4:01 PM
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Your donations to Matter News are doubled through the end of the year.

Here's a letter from our editor as we kick off our biggest fundraising campaign yet.

matternews.org/community/do...
Donate to our NewsMatch campaign today and support nonprofit news – Matter News
A letter from our editor as we kick off our year-end fundraising campaign, where your donations to Matter News are doubled through the end of December.
matternews.org
November 3, 2025 at 12:26 PM
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“The real horror comes not from the specter of witches among us, but from the fact that people who can become pregnant have found themselves transported back to the 15th century…”

Excerpted from @aubreyhirsch.bsky.social’s GRAPHIC RAGE: COMICS ON GENDER, JUSTICE, AND LIFE AS A WOMAN IN AMERICA. 🌙
A History of Witches
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www.muthamagazine.com
October 31, 2025 at 12:47 PM
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If SNAP benefits vanished tomorrow, feeding 42 million Americans for a month would cost about $7.8 billion.That’s less than 1% of the combined net worth of the three richest men in the U.S. A reminder of how obscene inequality has become and how easily hunger could be solved if we chose to.
October 29, 2025 at 11:55 AM
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“And then it came, the realization that—at least in my mind—79 years old was so young for a famous rich white woman in America like Diane Keaton and that 78 years old was practically a miracle for a black trans woman like Miss Major.”
Diane Keaton, Miss Major, D'Angelo...
Who gets to live a "long" life in America?
open.substack.com
October 17, 2025 at 2:04 PM
Ever wonder what it would be like to attend a wedding with an ex? I wrote 100 words about it for Five Minutes. Thanks for the opportunity, @fiveminutelit.bsky.social ! ✨
"Plus One" by @jen-bryant.bsky.social, a Southerner living in the Midwest. Her work has appeared in Ms., BUST, The Sun, Matter News, and elsewhere.
October 17, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Last month, I interviewed Heather Marie Cline about memoir writing, cycle breaking, and storytelling as reclamation. Read it here and check out @hmcline.bsky.social ‘s gorgeous essay in Issue #79 of Mud Season Review!

#essays #interviews
Transforming Pain into Purpose: An Interview with Heather Marie Cline - Mud Season Review
The title “A Way Out of Nowhere” references your mother physically leaving your stepfather but also invokes larger themes like breaking cycles. How did you choose this title, and what does it mean to ...
mudseasonreview.com
October 15, 2025 at 12:01 PM
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“If there’s a legislative agenda we should have, it should be to eradicate houselessness in our city,” Upchurch said. “And I don’t understand why we don’t have that bigger, shared vision of liberation in our community.”

matternews.org/community/re...
Residents express fear, uncertainty as Kaleidoscope prepares to end youth housing program – Matter News
Kaleidoscope Youth Center announced in mid-September that it would be closing its housing program for queer youth after the Ohio Department of Health declined to renew the Columbus-based nonprofit’s g...
matternews.org
October 14, 2025 at 4:37 PM
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LOOK AT THE MOON!!!!!!!!!
October 6, 2025 at 11:15 PM
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“There aren’t a lot of legal alternatives for minors who need HRT [or] even just hormone blockers.” Embi also lamented the loss of access to therapy and mental health support in the absence of THRIVE. “It’s going to be a huge loss for a lot of trans youth across Central Ohio.”

By Larkin Cleland.
Trans youth react to Nationwide Children’s Hospital ending gender-affirming care – Matter News
A Republican-led crackdown on trans healthcare is impacting local hospitals and both minor and adult patients, driving some towards community-based alternatives for care.
matternews.org
October 2, 2025 at 11:19 AM
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Mud Season Review is open for submissions from 10/1-10/31! Send us your best art, fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. To review the full guidelines, please visit mudseasonreview.com/submit.
October 1, 2025 at 3:30 PM
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Our workshop participants slay us! More than 30 publications reported to us in September! We couldn't be prouder. Congratulations, trousers! www.smokelong.com/smokelong-wo...
SmokeLong Workshop Celebration — September 2025 - SmokeLong Quarterly
Each month we celebrate our current and previous workshop participants’ publications reported to us through Submittable (The SmokeLong Workshop Prize). Each of the publications below, with the excepti...
www.smokelong.com
September 30, 2025 at 4:27 PM
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Issue #79 marks 10 years of Mud Season Review! 🎉 Featuring artwork by Jennifer Follman, poetry by Eli Karren, fiction by Summer Hammond, creative Nonfiction by Heather Marie Cline, and letters from MSR co-founders Rebecca Starks and Danielle Thierry.
September 23, 2025 at 1:21 PM
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As always, support your local station. They need it more than you know. And, if you can swing it, adopt a station in another state: adoptastation.org
Adopt A Station - Rescue Public Media
Help preserve independent journalism and community programming across America by adopting a public media station. Congress has voted to rescind public media's funding.
adoptastation.org
September 24, 2025 at 6:40 PM
So excited that my little flash essay found a home in issue #51 of Cleaver Magazine! This issue is incredible - it’s an honor to be in such good company.
Jennifer Bryant: SHELTER • Cleaver Magazine
Writing by Jennifer Bryant has appeared in The Sun, Ms., BUST, Anodyne Mag, and elsewhere. She is an editor at MUTHA Magazine.
www.cleavermagazine.com
September 24, 2025 at 4:16 PM
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support matter news, columbus.
Becoming increasingly clear we’re gonna have to build a parallel infrastructure for all the media we really love. The reason all of this is happening under the color of law is hyperconsolidation, dissent being traded straight up for merger approval, or fear of harassment.
September 18, 2025 at 2:47 PM
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“There are campuses where professors are being fired for statements made in classes. And there’s this sense of am I being recorded? Are people signing up for classes simply to antagonize? And all of that does feel even more amplified now, especially in the aftermath of this killing.”
Targeted Ohio State professors on the damaging impact of Turning Point's ‘professor watchlist’ – Matter News
TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, who in the days since his assassination has been lauded in conservative circles as a staunch defender of free speech, spent much of his career working to reshape higher edu...
matternews.org
September 17, 2025 at 11:26 AM
Being a 2025 Ucross Foundation Fellow in Literature is a dream come true. See you soon, Wyoming!

#ucross
UCROSS WELCOMES FALL 2025 FELLOWS
Today, Ucross Foundation, the acclaimed artist residency program, announced its Fall 2025 Fellows. From August to early December, 65 writers, visual artists, composers, choreographers, and...
www.ucrossfoundation.org
September 16, 2025 at 1:37 PM
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Come hang with us in Brooklyn on Wednesday! Details at the link. 🔗
Join MUTHA and Pen Parentis on 9/17 for a night out with parents who are writers/artists across genres that take on taboo topics. Details and tickets at the link in bio!

THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2025 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKEND EVENT

@bkbookfest.bsky.social @penparentis.bsky.social

#BKBF
September 14, 2025 at 7:37 PM
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One of the things we do right in Ohio (despite the current administration attempts to change that) is have an amazing system of libraries.
September 10, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Loved this beautiful event last night at the Columbus Metropolitan Library for The People’s Project! I could listen to @theferocity.bsky.social & @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social in conversation all day. ✨
September 10, 2025 at 1:03 PM