Jared Jackson

Program Director, Literary Programs and Emerging Voices

Jared Jackson is the literary programs and Emerging Voices program director at PEN America, where he oversees writing programs including the Emerging Voices Fellowship, the Dreaming Out Loud workshop series, and the Worker Writers School. Additionally, he administers the New York office’s PEN Out Loud series, PEN America’s flagship literary conversation series showcasing literary excellence and a wide range of diverse voices. In 2022, he was named a New York Foundation for the Arts Executive Leader of Color.

Also a writer, editor, and educator, his writing has been published in the Best American Short Stories 2023, New York Times Book Review, Yale Review, Guernica, Kenyon Review, n+1, and elsewhere. He has been awarded residencies and fellowships from MacDowell (’21,’23), Yaddo, Center for Fiction, Baldwin for the Arts, Tin House, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Plympton’s Writing Downtown Residency. He was a finalist for the 2023 Granum Foundation Prize. He received an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, where he was a Chair’s Fellow, Creative Writing Teaching Fellow, and an adjunct assistant professor.


Articles by Jared Jackson

Writing as Craft
Thursday February 29

Deborah Jackson Taffa | The PEN Ten Interview

I could only share my family’s trauma if I told it in context, reminding readers that my elders struggled, not because of a moral failure on their part, but because of societal and governmental pressures.

Writing as Craft
Thursday February 15

Maura Cheeks | The PEN Ten Interview

I was thinking about what would have to be true for someone in power to take a stand for reparations and push it through.

Thursday August 3

Eddie Ndopu | The PEN Ten Interview

We need to save ourselves. We need to show ourselves the kind of tenderness and compassion that we know deep down we deserve.