Community Corner

Journey From Prison Visit to Prize for One Local Writer

After walking around with her tale inside of her for 10 years, Jen Senft finally releases it to accolades, much to her relief.

Editor's Note: This article was posted by Erica Jackson. It was written by Lon Cohen.

It took Jen Senft 10 years to get up the nerve up to submit her short story “Prison Visit” for publication. But after getting into the 2012 edition of The Southampton Review, the short story has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, an American literary collection of the best work published in small presses.

Those familiar with Senft’s work in the “Grammar Check” blog that she writes for Patch will be in for a world of hurt when they read “Prison Visit.” Her brutally honest story has none of the trademark quirkiness and fun found in her blog.

“It’s a very disturbing story,” she said by phone. “Not like the grammar blog at all.”

That, as they say, is an understatement.

Senft’s tale follows the main character as she treks through the maze of bored stares from jailers and routine security protocols to pay a visit to an inmate, someone who haunts her very being. We’re also brought on a journey through paradoxical emotions of her memories, her mind wandering, assessing her life as she faces this person and the relationship that has defined her entire life.

To hear Senft tell it, the emotions, the feelings, are all drawn from her own life, even if the actual story is entirely fictional.

“I couldn’t separate myself from it,” she said of why it took her so long to submit her story. People ask her if it’s true. “It’s emotionally authentic,” she tells them.

When Senft was in high school her father went to prison for what she describes as a white-collar crime. The experience as a young girl visiting her father in prison stayed with her for the rest of her life.

“People don’t realize that,” she said. “That’s going to affect that person forever. Prison is not something you think about unless you’re in that situation.”

It was an experience she says that she was never able to separate herself from.
“Nobody understood the effect.”

By happenstance one day Senft did meet with someone who could understand what she was going through, another writer who had a prison experience himself. While waiting around during a film festival she struck up a conversation with the author Billy Hayes, who wrote a memoir called “Midnight Express” about his escape from a Turkish prison that was made into a 1978 film of the same name adapted for the screen by Oliver Stone.

“I never meet anybody in my demographic with a prison experience,” she said of the email relationship she developed with Hayes. It helped as she navigated the editing process, one Senft called “deeply harrowing,” much like the story itself.

Since it was released out into the world, "Prison Visit" has gotten a great response, which makes the author glad because it is such a personal story.

In the 1990s, Senft’s journey to being nominated for a literary prize began when she moved from Brooklyn to East Hampton. Already with two degrees in hand (a Master of Arts in psychology from New York University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from NYU’s Film School) she decided to go to back and pursue her career in letters by getting a Master in Fine Arts in writing from Stony Brook Southampton.

Her grammar blog on Patch is somewhat an extension of the teaching she does now in classes she holds at East End art schools, galleries and libraries.

Grammar has also been something that stayed with Senft since she was a young girl. 

“I was the only kid in class when I was little who was genuinely interested in grammar.”

She has what she calls an “encyclopedic knowledge of grammar” that puts her in the world of others who obsess over the minutiae of a subject, like members of a fantasy baseball league or a sci-fi fan club.

“I do sound like a geek,” she said. “I have an insane interest in grammar. In syntax. In language. In words. All of it. I hate to use 'geek' because it’s a compliment nowadays.”

In high school, she said, Latin was only subject she really liked.

Her blog allows her to share her love of the English language with the world. At first she wondered who would read a blog about grammar but to her surprise she’s found an audience.

“I get a lot of wonderful feedback. People say to me ‘I learned something.’”

Like her blog, Senft’s short story is also a foray into a new world of digital publishing. Besides The Southampton Review, she’s made the story available as a digital download on Amazon andBarnes & Noble for 99 cents.

Her decision to self-publish came from a growing audience who wanted to read her story and emailing a document around didn’t seem feasible. She found out about digital publishing and gave it a try.

“It’s so amazing how you can publish these days,” she said.

Senft has ideas on how to publish her work in the future now that she has a following with a short story collection possible in the near future.

Now that her personal story is out there for everyone to read on the digital frontier and not just in “some obscure literary journal,” Senft said she’s glad she finally released it. She was even “jump-up-and-down thrilled” to be nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

“That story means a lot to me,” she said. “The Pushcart nomination gave me the confidence that it was worth it. That people would pay 99 cents to read. It did stand on its own.”

Senft has advice for writers who have a story they are carrying around inside of them for years like she had.

“Write as though whomever it is about is not going to read it.”

And what about when you finally finish that emotional story?

“You’ll want everyone but them to read it,” she said.

Prison Visit will also be available in paperback from Mustard Seed Press as of May 1. Winners of the Pushcart Prize will be announced in May. 

Click here to read Senft’s blog “Grammar Check” on Patch.


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