About the Author

Jen Cross is a writer, performer, and writing workshop facilitator based in Oakland, CA. Her organization, Writing Ourselves Whole, founded in 2003, focuses primarily on sexuality writing workshops and writing with survivors of sexual trauma. Jen's writing appears in more than thirty anthologies and periodicals, including The Healing Art of Writing, Nobody Passes, Visible: A Femmethology, Best Sex Writing 2008; she is also the co-editor of Sex Still Spoken Here (with Dr. Carol Queen and Amy Butcher). Jen is currently an MFA candidate at San Francisco State University. Dr. Carol Queen [www.carolqueen.com] co-founded the Center for Sex & Culture [www.sexandculture.org] in San Francisco and is staff sexologist and Company Historian at Good Vibrations, the women-founded sex shop, where she has worked since 1990. A noted cultural sexologist whose work has been widely published, she's written, co-authored or edited several books, most recently The Sex & Pleasure Book: Good Vibrations Guide to Great Sex for Everyone. She has been speaking publicly about sexuality for over 40 years; she frequently speaks to conferences and academic, general and specialized audiences. Pat is a poet, playwright, librettist, and author of ten books of poetry and non-fiction. She was born in the Ozark mountains of Missouri where she became intimate with fossils, creekbeds, grasshoppers and box turtles. After a search for work took her single mother to St. Louis, from age ten Pat lived in tenements and in an orphanage until she was given a scholarship to college. Those early experiences have deeply influenced her writing, and fueled her passion for those who have been denied voice through poverty and other misfortunes.







Pat�s libretto, �The Lament of Michal,� was performed in Carnegie Hall by Phyllis Bryn Julson and the Atlanta Symphony directed by Robert Shaw. Her poetry has been read by Garrison Keillor on National Public Radio�s Writer�s Almanac sixteen times. There are more than three hundred recorded productions of her plays for community theater. A film about her work with women in low-income housing, titled �Tell Me Something I Can�t Forget�, is included in the DVD companion to her book, Writing Alone and With Others.







Amherst Writers & Artists, founded by Pat in 1981 and directed and managed by Pat and Peter for thirty years, is now an international network of workshop leaders who use the writing method described in Pat�s book, Writing Alone and With Others, Oxford University Press.







Pat�s newest book, How the Light Gets In: Writing as a Spiritual Practice, was released from Oxford University Press.

Reviews

"Writing Ourselves Whole is a raw, powerful, necessary, wise and practiced guidebook to the revolutionary practice of finding the words, language and voice to transform suffering. It is chock full of insights, exercises, experience and the kind of fierce love and teaching that transforms pain into power. Jen Cross is a brave and brilliant transmitter of the deepest healing and healing practices. To anyone who has experienced abuse, violation and trauma, this book is a way out of the darkness." — Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues
"Writing Ourselves Whole is rich, intelligent, passionate, intimate, honest and encouraging. Jen Cross draws from her personal experience, her many years of facilitating writing groups with survivors of sexual abuse, and the wisdom of a variety of teachers and writers, to provide guidance for writing ‘and for life’ that’s both sensible and inspiring. This book is a treasure trove!" —Ellen Bass, author of The Courage to Heal
"This is the most essential book on writing practice I know ... Every writing teacher, writing coach, writing workshop or group leader and every person with a history of any kind of trauma needs this book.” —Pat Schneider, author of How the Light Gets In and founder of the Amherst Writers & Artists method