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Jen Knox earned her MFA from Bennington's Writing Seminars. She works as a creative writing professor at San Antonio College.
Jen's other work includes a memoir entitled Musical Chairs. Some of her short stories and essays have been published or are forthcoming in Annalemma Magazine, Bananafish, Bartleby Snopes, Eclectic Flash, Flashquake, Foundling Review, Fwriction:Review, The Houston Literary Journal, LITSNACK, Metazen, and elsewhere.
Reviewed by Anne Boiling for Readers' Favorite
To Begin Again by Jen Knox is a collection of short stories and essays. Due to the length of short stories and essays are very difficult to develop the meat of the plot or situations. However, Knox had no problem with the task.
The common factor in these stories is change or new beginnings. Knox asks us to look deep inside ourselves and search our soul for how we would react in certain situations. At The Window is the story of a young woman assaulted. Despite the fact that there were many witnesses to the physical attack no one offered to help her. No one wanted to be involved. Like Smoke is the story of Amira. Her boss is rather a tyrant. Does that give her the right to take money from the cash drawer? Angelique saved Joe from himself by giving him bitter tap water. Absurd Hunger is the story of a man that has not come to terms with the death of his wife. His psychiatrist has him write letters to her. I found some humor in the letters and he found healing. Untied was an unusual story of a husband and wife struggling financially and taking desperate measures to survive.
Knox has a great talent to tug at the heartstrings of readers. The author never goes too far in her writing. She leaves room for the reader to come to their own conclusions. Jen Knox art is classical. I will be watching for more of her work.
