Charlie Jensen is the Director of PEN America’s Los Angeles office. He led the prestigious UCLA Extension Writers’ Program for a decade, fostering a sense of community among writers, instructors, and community organizations. Within the 20 years of experience in teaching in creative writing and humanities courses in all levels of higher education, he has worked and volunteered with the Association for Writers & Writing Programs, Arts for LA, Americans for the Arts, Angels Gate Cultural Center, Emerging Arts Leaders/LA, and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at ASU. Jensen is also a poet and a memoirist, and has published four books and seven chapbooks. His writing appeared in The Los Angeles Times, American Poetry Review, and New England Review, and he received an Individual Master Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles.
Jensen holds a Bachelor’s in Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, and Film Studies in the University of Minnesota, and a Master’s in Fine Arts, with a concentration in Creative Writing with emphasis in poetry from Arizona State University.