About
Jan Richards is a tenured English instructor in the Pacific Northwest. She has more than 18 years of teaching experience and is nationally certified as a Developmental Education Specialist through the Kellogg Institute at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. She has taught at North Carolina State University, East Tennessee State University, Campbell University (NC), King University (TN) and other community colleges, located both in Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina. For two years, Jan also taught at Harnett Correctional Institution, a medium-security prison in Lillington, North Carolina. She earned her Master of Arts in English from Western Washington University and majored in Creative Nonfiction Writing.
Jan has been publishing her work and giving public readings for twenty years. She served as Creative Nonfiction Editor of the Bellingham Review (2004-2005), an American literary magazine published by Western Washington University. She was a former editor for Explorations arts magazine (VA), the Red Clay Review (NC), and Trillium magazine (WA).
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Jan is an avid photographer, loves all forms of storytelling on both stage and screen, and is currently working on a textbook - Composing Knowledge in the 21st Century: Writing in Community - as well as her memoir, Outside the Realm of Tangible Things. She hopes that her blog and reflections on grief will help others heal, to realize we are all connected - both with each other and our natural world - and help to make a new relationship with what they have lost.
