Jan Haag offered a session on May 16.
When Jan Haag was a child, growing up next to a lake in Northern California, her father brought home a hand-cranked mimeograph machine and said, “Maybe you can do something with this.” Since she’d been writing poems and stories since she could hold a pencil, her parents helped her launch the Granite Bay Gazette, her first newspaper, when she was 11. Her mother typed up the stories and her father fired up the mimeograph machine, and Jan distributed her paper around the neighborhood, always on the lookout for news for the next issue.
She continued her journalistic career in high school, writing a column about her school’s events for the local paper and becoming editor of her high school paper. Jan pursued journalism in college at California State University, Sacramento, where she became editor-in-chief of the college paper, The Hornet. She earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from CSUS in journalism and English.
Jan worked as a reporter and editor at small Northern California newspapers in South Lake Tahoe and Vacaville before working for The Sacramento Bee as a copy editor and feature writer. She covered the California Legislature for United Press International in Sacramento and served as editor-in-chief of Sacramento magazine for four years. She continues to write freelance stories for Sacramento magazine and other publications.
A poet and prose writer, Jan is the author of a book of poetry, Companion Spirit, and Ocean Falls, a young adult novel set in British Columbia. She is working on a novel set in Sacramento in the 1950s and the 1970s. She is the editor of Amherst Writers & Artists Press and is an Amherst Writers & Artists affiliate who leads creative writing workshops in Sacramento.
Charming Mayhem by Brenda Jacobsen
Deep inside a Costa Rican jungle lived three-inch tall magical monkeys. I brought five of them home in my pocket—three in my windbreaker and two in my purse. I kept them as pets and fed them crunchy citrus morsels, which they gobbled up in no time flat. They were well-mannered and remembered to say please and thank you. Each monkeyette, as I called them, wore a darling dapper diaper that I designed from torn sections of double-ply kleenex. They hippied up my rather dull life.
The miniature monkeys were high-functioning and naturally athletic. My nimble neighbors taught them to juggle babied green peas and somersault in the air. They cared for the trio when I went away and kept them in their fish tank. The local TV station heard about my exuberant squealing gymnasts and invited them to their early morning talk show. I let my darling devilish pets slide and skim over the sleek coffee table. We found this amusing until two miniscule tricksters fell into a water glass and nearly drowned.
Not the Right Job by Brenda Jacobsen
Putting the untamed Growlson children to bed by 8pm proved a challenge. While infant Bonnie carfuffled in front of the television, Bicker hit Prudence, who was nosing through her fashionings. The three Growlson children never got along. The sitter, Sarah Crabbit, wobbled with frustration and threatened to quit. After all, she was equally loose as the children but expected more than two button- downed dainty dollars. There was no smell of profit in this horrible highfalutin household—only the skating of obnoxious attitudes that left her purply and sad.
Thank you for joining us for Write Around the World!
For the rest of the summer, watch our blog! We are sharing writing from AWA’s yearly marathon fundraiser, which happened this year all-online throughout the month of May.
We offer this series in appreciation for the incredible community of writers and workshop leaders that sustain us. If you’re inspired and would like to be part of the fundraiser, please donate!