Grow Your Writing with Charlie
Charles Jensen (he/him) wrote Splice of Life: A Memoir in 13 Film Genres, which braids together in each chapter traditional memoir storytelling with discussion of a single film. His collections of poetry areInstructions between Takeoff and Landing (2022), Nanopedia (2018), and The First Risk (2009). He has published seven chapbooks of cross-genre work, including Living Things (2007), The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon (2008), Breakup/Breakdown (2016), and Story Problems (2017). In 2024, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs awarded him a prestigious Individual Master Artist Fellowship, and designated him a 2019-2020 Cultural Trailblazer. He is the recipient of the 2020 Outwrite Nonfiction Chapbook Award, 2018 Zócalo Poetry Prize, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, the 2007 Frank O’Hara Chapbook Award, and an Artist’s Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, American Poetry Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Journal, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Exposition Review, The Florida Review, and Passages North. He founded the online poetry magazine LOCUSPOINT, which explored creative work on a city-by-city basis. He hosts The Write Process, a podcast in which one writer tells the story of crafting one work from concept to completion. He served as the Co-Chair of Emerging Arts Leaders/LA, a member of the Emerging Leader Council of Americans for the Arts, on the board of directors of the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, and on the steering committee for Lambda Literary’s Lambda LitFest. He has taught open enrollment, undergraduate, and graduate courses at Arizona State University, The Writer’s Center, University of Denver, UCLA Extension, Rio Salado College, Pima Community College, and Montgomery College. He lives in Long Beach, serves on the board of directors at Angels Gate Cultural Center, volunteers with The Book Truck, and directs the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension.
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Apply to join Charlie’s small group of writers that he will lead through our unique 12 week mentoring and workshopping program.
Decide if Charlie's Right for You with Our Mentor Interview
What excites you most about writing?
“What I love most about writing is the discovery process in writing the first draft. I think there are endless possibilities not just in the stories we can tell, but how we can tell them, from crossing and blending genres to involving the reader in finalizing the text. Anything feels possible with writing, and I take innovation and inspiration seriously in my own work and the work I’m drawn to. Writing has always helped me find balance in my mental health, too. I don’t consider my writing to be therapy (though it can and should for others if that’s the case!), but I find all the writing I do has a therapeutic impact on me. For that reason, I treasure the time I have to write and create and discover what I can do,” Charlie said.
What mindset does a writer need to grow?
“Writers must be willing to experience “failure.” That can mean a lot of different things, but at its core, I think a writer must be willing to try something and not quite get there the first time (or first few times, or first few hundred times). Writing is partly a skill, which means it can be practiced and honed over time. It’s also sort of magical in that each time you sit down to write, you’re creating something that doesn’t exist, has never existed, and may not exist without you. Writers can train themselves by reading reflectively, paying attention to what resonates with them and what doesn’t, and interacting with other writers. There isn’t one way to be a writer, and I think we give ourselves the best chance of reaching our writing goals when we are open to the possibilities we discover through interacting with other writers and their work, other genres, other media. The world is our library and it’s always open.”
What three words best describe you as a mentor?
“Coach. Advocate. Facilitator.
In the classroom, I always think of myself as a coach to my students. This is part of the skill development aspect of writing—I can set up drills (exercises), a training schedule (class meetings), and guides (reading assignments and discussion prompts), but it is always incumbent upon the writer to show up, be open to growing through practice, and setting their own goals. I’m encouraging, I remind people to be gentle on themselves but to strive for their goals, and I want everyone in the classroom to work as a team, regardless of skill level or prior experience. As an experienced writer, I learn so much from my students, especially new writers, who have fresh perspectives and approaches to work. For me, coaching is invigorating to my own practice.
I advocate for students to make writing a priority in their life, whatever shape that takes, and for writers to be good to themselves, to participate responsibly in community, and to seek out opportunities that help them grow.
My approach to teaching has always been to facilitate learning over the approach we might call “knowledge transfer.” This is because I have awareness that I am always learning, and I thrive when I work in an environment that prioritizes my own discoveries, my own passions, my own goals. I try to create that structure for students. I’m here to guide, support, and clarify, but I am not here to tell anyone there are right ways to create their work. I want to meet students where they are at, find out where they want to go, and then help them design the path to reach it.”
What makes a good writing mentor?
“A good writing mentor can blend some basic suggestions about writing with tailored input that helps a student realize their work’s potential. This is a delicate balance. It’s easy to make aesthetic recommendations that might pull a work more in line with what I would want to write, but that isn’t likely to help a student hone their own voice. For that reason, I don’t approach work to determine if it’s “good” or “bad.” I think it’s important to listen to students talk about what they feel their struggles are, and then work forward from those points. Mentoring requires a lot of listening and question-asking. It also requires me to understand where I am as a writer and guide in each and every moment with a student. I strive to stand alongside the writer and to move at their pace. I invite them to question my input. We learn through dialogue and through practice.”
What is your style of feedback?
“I approach every workshop experience with a desire first to celebrate what the writer accomplished. There is always something to hold up and acknowledge in a piece. We can learn just as much from identifying what has surprised or excited a reader as we can from what didn’t land. Writing is not only art; it is communication. It intends to deliver a message. How well that message is received in the way the writer intended it is the goal of workshopping. I like to ask questions of the work, especially about things that weren’t clear to me when I read. I’m also a big advocate of thinking of workshop feedback not as a proscriptive set of suggestions, but a way for a writer to locate opportunities for development in their draft. When several people ask a similar question about a piece, the writer should consider that point in the work to figure out what makes sense to them in how to edit it.”
What was the most recent "standout" book you read?
“Safiya Sinclair’s How to Say Babylon really moved me when I read it—and I read it so quickly! She very deftly presents a difficult lived experience without preciousness, but still managed to get my investment in the main character from the very first pages. I was rooting for her, I wanted to protect her, and I understood how I was meant to witness this life. It’s a book that taught me a lot about a culture that is not my own as well as how to incorporate the beautiful techniques of poetry into prose.”