Hi! I’m Jaclyn. I’m the Hamilton-based author of a poetry collection, Danger Flower, and a picture book, Why Are You So Quiet? I recently served as the 2023/24 Mabel Pugh Taylor Writer in Residence at McMaster University and Hamilton Public Library.

From the beginning of my writing career, I've moved between the inner world of creative discovery and the outer world of community building and connection. I first began teaching general population writing workshops out of a renovated bank vault at the back of a Toronto coffee shop in 2015. Since then, I’ve facilitated writing workshops at the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre/Multicultural Women Against Rape, at gritLIT here in Hamilton, at the Hamilton Fringe Festival’s Spark program, and at Indigo locations across the GTHA. I’ve also taught dozens of workshops around my own kitchen table, and over the past eight years, I’ve mentored a diverse group of emerging writers one-on-one, both virtually and in person.

My teaching philosophy draws on my training in the Amherst Writers & Artists Method of workshop facilitation, Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process, and my own experiences working with writers from all walks of life. The work of writing and writing education doesn't take place in a vacuum -- it always happens within a larger societal context of racism, ableism, ageism, sexism, classism, and cisheteropatriachy. I aim to create trauma-informed workshops and mentorships that acknowledge writers as expansive human beings with complex responsibilities, histories, and full lives. My heartfelt intention as a facilitator is first to avoid doing harm and causing creative injury. Next, to encourage creative freedom and play. And finally, to help writers develop their craft so that their work can be as effective as possible, with the writer's own intentions always guiding that process.