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96 Creative Writing from Local Authors
Short stories
Cleaning Up the Universe
Jennifer Lynn Krohn
Jessica could not stand dirt, grime, or filth of any kind. She wore only white clothes because those could be bleached. She shaved her legs, arms, and head to ensure that no crud or gunk would find refuge there. She ripped out the carpets from her apartment and started scrubbing the walls, floor, and even ceiling. She scrubbed until her hands were red and chapped. She scrubbed until all particles of dust were gone, but she did not stop. When she looked at the woodgrain and the plaster, she saw the rot that would come. This was dust waiting to happen.
Her landlord showed up on Thursday to discover her apartment erased. Just an empty hole where the unit had been. Jessica was scrubbing away at her neighbors’ homes. Underneath that sponge, the details of their lives—unopened mail, a tv remote, a sweater left sprawled on the floor, a dish of cat food—disappeared.
The landlord swore at her. Jessica did not appreciate his filthy language and washed his mouth right out of his head.
By Friday, the apartment complex was gone, and Jessica was scrubbing away at a nearby strip mall. The owners of the shops called the police, but Jessica paid them no mind. After years of suffering through the dingy world, she was going to clean it up. Also, she never had realized just how filthy firearms were. The debris the bullets created, the smoke and dust of the gunpowder, and the noise was awful too. Jessica had long detested noise pollution. She realized that the government had never actually cleaned up law enforcement, so it fell to her.
By Saturday, the town had been wiped from the face of the Earth. Jessica continued cleaning. Right through the barricades that the National Guard had set up. The mountains did not stop her, after all they were already in the slow process of crumbling away. It was better to start at the source and prevent the mess in the first place.
By Sunday, the state been scrubbed away. The country’s leaders called together scientists and top generals, but no one could figure out how to slow Jessica’s progress. Every obstacle that they put forth only caused Jessica to pause, put her hands on her hips, sigh, and redouble her efforts at scrubbing.
By Monday, the country had been erased, and other world leaders became desperate. One country panicked and deployed their nuclear option, but Jessica saw how the radiation infiltrated everything. The worst type of stain.
By what would have been Tuesday, the world was gone. Only an empty spot in space remained. However, since the Earth no longer spun around the sun, there were no more days. An improvement Jessica thought. All days were good for was cluttering up the calendar. Jessica looked around her and saw the asteroids and planets, litter sprawled about. She wondered why no one thought to put away their things and continued cleaning.
After sweeping away the solar system, she moved on to Alpha Centauri. Steadily, she sponged up the Milky Way and moved on to the Andromeda Galaxy. She wondered how it was possible that she’d been cleaning for so long but never seemed to make any progress. But she did not stop.
And eventually, after eons and eons, after she wiped away the last star dust and cleansed the universe of light and dark, she looked around pleased with how clean everything—how clean nothing—was. But, poor dear, she looked down at herself and realized she was a fright. No hypocrite, Jessica started at the mess that was her human self. Soon she too was gone, and all that remained was a sodden sponge.
Listen to the story here:
Author Bio
Jennifer Lynn Krohn (she/her) was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She currently teaches English at Central New Mexico Community College. She has published work in The Pinch, Storm Cellar, Pleiades, and Necessary Fiction among others.
poetry
An Indigenous Cyberpunk Manifesto
Brian Hudson
NIGHT SPIDERWEB by Sarah Klockars-Clauser
Gibson constructed the console cowboy, but we are the digital Natives. We are the original Natives of the web, the tech-savvy NDNs weaving in and out of discussion threads, the warriors with keyboards who carry sparks into cyberspace. We are the coders who create sovereign virtual worlds, the digital code talkers who braid Indigenous tongues into networks of resistance. We’ve navigated the webs of branching nodes since time immemorial—before kubernētēs became cybernetics and before punk was ponk. Our digital allies boost our signals. We are Indigenous cyberpunks.
Author Bio
Brian is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation from Bushyhead, Oklahoma. He has done many things to earn a living: programming, washing dishes, providing tech support, welding, and shelving library books, to name just a few. His current and longest-held career has been teaching at the college level.
He has published three short stories in the genre of Indigenous science fiction. His short story “Land Run on Sooner City” can be found in mitewacimowina: Indigenous Science Fiction & Speculative Storytelling. “Digital Medicine” was included in the People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction! special issue of Lightspeed Magazine, which won the 2017 British Fantasy Award for Best Anthology. It was reprinted in Hivemind: Global Speculative Fiction. And “Virtually Cherokee” was printed in the April 2023 issue of Lightspeed Magazine and also turned into a podcast.
In addition to creative work, he has published critical work on animals in Native literature and have spoken internationally on the topics of nonhumans and Indigenous science fiction. He currently teaches digital storytelling and Native Studies in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Read more about Brian at www. Briankhudson.com.
It Grows: A Motto
Erin W. Elkins
—for Allen Braden
Here I can say that you are not you
and I am not I. The book I set down in a dream
and lost was one thing of no substance,
disappeared inside another: traceless
and unwritten. All the lights turned off
at the state line in the ‘90s: you drove
in darkness from one corner to another,
lizards and lizard-killers shut-eyed, unseen.
I am not them either: New Mexico did
and did not want you. New Mexico
does not need any of us to tell its one true story,
keeling backward on a lawn chair, chewing ice
while a roadrunner cracks winter snail shells
against a sprinkler head, tossing them skyward
and swallowing them, dry and unaware:
You know I already died one time before.
Author Bio
Originally from southern Indiana, Erin W. Elkins now lives in Albuquerque with her family where she has taught English at CNM since 2008. More of her work can be found at erinwelkins.com.
El Cuento de Juana Henrieta
Damien Flores
There was no wind the day Juana battled the machine.
Smoke rose from the stacks of the downtown tortilla factoryslow as the wrinkled and steady hands, las viejitas.
Cocineras whose fingers were callous as the spirits of their mothers.They were the assembly line of ancient faces.
They worked for coins off their husbands’ wages.
Mothers of the new deal
labored their bones, dull
with the factory whistle at dawn.
Harina y manteca
became the skin on their palms.
Fifty pounds of flour each dark morning,
as their grip stung with salt grains and leavening.
Tortillas rounded like the suffered
crown of the God carved in the altar,
their God hung above the stove.
Round rolling pins cut from cedars
smoothed with hidden splinters in the hands,
and dough rose before the sun.
This morning hung bitter in Juana’s mouth,
like the daylight that did not stretch
over her tongue when she woke,
when the women found machines
on the floor where they once stood.
Here are your replacements,
the boss growled like rusting metal,
There’s no work here. I want you all out.
And the ancient faces gazed like forgotten saints
they once prayed to.
Some cursed the foreman’s name,
their fists clenched tight as the gears
in the machine that took their jobs.
But Juana did not move,
she stood steel-heavy
and her wrinkles run fierce
like flooding arroyos
when she said,
I’m faster than any damn machine.
The engine fired,
conveyor belt rolled tamales,
each an exact copy of the last.
Juana took the table beside.
Handful of masa.
Cornhusk hidden in her skin.
She spread masa, carne, y chile.
Each glide of her hand
like wiping tears from her daughter’s face,
wiped sweat on the back of her fist
her salt, a blessing of food at the table.
But she knew it didn’t matter if she’d beat the machine
regardless, she’d gone like so many Mexicanas
rotting like nopals beneath a tractor’s heels
just as the men’s backs were replaced
with forklifts and backhoes.
But an engine does not name its children
after a passing rain cloud
does not brush dead leaves from headstones,
and never learned the recipe from her grandmother’s tongue.
The machine fired
la masa, la carne, el chile, la oja
wrapped like the bandana of Juana’s hair.
la oja, la masa, el chile, la carne
bled the crevice of the hands
el chile, la oja, la carne, la masa
was her husband buried in the Philipines
la carne, la masa, la oja, el chile
was her daughter’s birth cries
la oja, el chile, la masa, la carne
became her shadow on her wedding day
el chile, la masa, la carne, la oja
became the peasant maid’s machete.
As the engine sang the death of the laborer’s breath,
the foreman’s eyes never left Juana’s face
as the machine slowed down.
Smoke of motor oil snaked the air
and the conveyor stopped.
Juana crushed the last tamale, her voice like a snake’s
venom in the chile,. besame fundio
malagracido, sonso Viejo estupido.
¡Toma las tamales y ponlos adentro de su culo, pendejo!
Her shadow stained the floor where she stood.
The next day, the machines unloaded,
the women manned the controls
but Juana never showed for work.
They said she joined the army.
Maybe opened a restaurant.
Some said she became a corn plant
rooted in burning soil,
but really, none of them knew.
Still their throats all burn from the steam,
the gears grind off and rust in their dreams,
their mouths still dry when they say
the name of the woman and sing legends of the day
Juana Henrieta made tamales against the machine.
An earlier version of this poem appears El Cuento de Juana Henrieta, by Damien Flores (Albuquerque: Destructible Heart Press, 2011) and Junkyard Dogs: Poems by Damien Flores. Used with permission.
Learn more about the poem and listen to Damien perform it here:
Damien Flores hails from nowhere but Old Town, Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is The City of Albuquerque’s 7th Poet Laureate and is a proud graduate of the University of New Mexico, where he was a member of the two-time National Champion Loboslam team. He is a two-time National Poetry Slam Champion, is currently an educator in Albuquerque, and hosts the Spoken Word Hour on 89.9 KUNM-FM. He is the author of “Junkyard Dogs” and his work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.
I am dark I am forest
Jennifer Givhan
I carried a bowl of menudo into the forest I carried my bisabuela’s tripas not daring ask whose intestines I carried con cilantro y radish y cebolla chopped fine I carried the sewing machine they’d slip-stitched her to in the garment district downtown I carried the forest crackling against asphalt where her chanclas burnt & melted so I carried her too I wore no red I bore no basket there was no forest but an avocado tree in the backyard of the house they made her sell to get her Medicare for her diabetes shots I carried her sugar-water a humming bird great-granddaughter I carried her flickering her black & white-screened I carried her face the scars her warped esposo left her granddaughter carried those wounds through the womb not wolf but blue-eyed man I stirred the menudo my belly the pot scalding into the forest I carried & that tree I chopped down chopped into a boat that carried my mother & my bisabuela across the chile-red sopa the blood-water broth named her Daughter what forest have we made for her I cannot see I carried darkness into that forest & sliced it out
“I am dark I am forest” Tik Tok featuring a reading from Jennifer Givhan
Author Bio
Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican-American and Indigenous poet and novelist from the Southwestern desert and the recipient of poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices. Her novel Salt Bones is coming this July 22, 2025 from Mulholland/Little, Brown. She holds a Master’s degree from California State University Fullerton and a Master’s in Fine Arts from Warren Wilson College. She is the author of five full-length poetry collections, including Rosa’s Einstein (University of Arizona Press), and the novels Trinity Sight and Jubilee (Blackstone Publishing), which were finalists for the Arizona-New Mexico Book Awards and won The Southwest Book Award. Her newest poetry collection Belly to the Brutal (Wesleyan University Press) and novel River Woman, River Demon (Blackstone Publishing) both draw from her practice of brujería. Her latest novel was chosen for Amazon’s Book Club and as a National Together We Read Library Pick and was featured on CBS Mornings. It also won an International Latino Book Award in the Rudolfo Anaya Latino-Focused Fiction category. Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, POETRY, TriQuarterly, The Boston Review, The Rumpus, Salon, Ploughshares, and many others. She’s received the Southwest Book Award, New Ohio Review’s Poetry Prize, Phoebe Journal’s Greg Grummer Poetry Prize, the Pinch Journal Poetry Prize, and Cutthroat’s Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. Givhan has taught at the University of Washington Bothell’s MFA program as well as Western New Mexico University and has guest lectured at universities across the country. She was the 2024 Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at The University of New Mexico.She would love to hear from you at jennifergivhan.com and you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for inspiration, prompts, and real talk about the publishing world and life as a mama writer.
Coyote
Katrina Kaye
There is a coyote smeared across the road; patchy fur in a heap, blood pools around mangled corpse.
This is on a highway in Texas.
The truck is on its side three miles from McLean. I think of the song,
Bye, bye Miss American Pie drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry and them good old boys drinking whiskey and rye…
The man is thrown at least 10ft, but it may be farther. Red horse blanket, a scattering of clothes from spilt suitcase, truck stop napkins dancing by the roadside.
There are no paramedics, just a couple of ER rerun med degrees holding the body straight. Two men beat CPR on his bare chest curled with wiry grey.
But the air is heavy, thick with freshly departed soul. As I drive through the meager parade of on lookers, the world stills.
The flush of the wind flattens, the rattle of the engine mutes, bystanders mouths move soundless, and the song chanting in my mind
singing this will be the day that I die, this will be the day that I die…
stops.
In a moment of desperation on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere, TX, no one is breathing.
Not the male body sprawled to the ground or the people hovering near him, not the young girl running or the child hugging his mother’s leg. No one is breathing.
It is after that I begin to notice the deer heaped in the median, necks twisted and torsos thick with bloat, hooves kicking skyward. I count three within the five miles of the crash site.
It is then I see the coyote. His head thrown back, patches of brown fur slaughtered red, white teeth and bone ground to asphalt.
There is a collective understanding when an innocent death is witnessed. A universal helplessness that spreads thick grease and holds us captive and silent. There is no dignity in road kill, There is no beauty in crushed mandible, no glory in stained hide or shattered hipbone.
It is a whimper, not a snarl. It is a turned over pick up, sprawled belongings. It is a bent mile marker and missing reflectors.
Sometimes it’s indiscernible; all you see is grass and sky and road, a blind spot on a highway in Texas, a broken man.
Author Bio
Katrina Kaye is an educator, writer, publisher, artist and community organizer whose work delves into themes of identity, memory, and human connection. Known for vivid imagery and emotional depth, her poetry blends traditional and experimental forms to explore personal and universal experiences.
She hoards her published writings on her website poetkatrinakaye.com and is seeking an audience for her ever-growing surplus of poetic meanderings. She is grateful to anyone who reads her work and in awe of those willing to share it.
Creative Non-Fiction
Bears Den Hostel
Sonja Dewing
Early in the morning, on day four of our nine-day hike, me and my friends all crawled out of our sleeping bags to the sound of steady rain. We were in a shelter deep in the woods on the Appalachian Trail. My friends, cadets from the old squadron at 904, had joined me. Jerald Ferdinand, Jenna Sharp, Bonnie McClennen, and Carol Goddard.
We cooked breakfast over an open fire and gathered around the map and made our big decision. It was raining that northeast kind of rain, the kind that settles in for the whole day.
We could hike through the mountainous terrain for three miles and spend the rest of the day at a camp, or we could hike fifteen miles and reach Bears Den Hostel. A hostel meant a building with beds, a kitchen, and hot showers. After hiking and camping for several days in Virginia, a hot shower and bed sounded perfect to me.
All eyes were on me to make the decision. Although perfectly comfortable carrying a backpack for search and rescue, I was still getting used to carrying a backpack with days of food, clothing, and all the comforts I could fit. I was the slowest hiker in the group so it would take me longer to reach the end point.
“Fifteen miles!” I said with confidence. I was feeling good and I liked the rain. Jenna, Bonnie, Carol, and Jerald all nodded in agreement, the excitement of another day on the trail.
It was time to decide who got to carry the cell phone. My mom had insisted I purchase this new technology so I had bought the latest model. The phone was the size of a chair seat with a phone handset. It was a little heavy, so we each took turns. Today it was Jenna’s turn.
The rain was warm and it was a warm day so I made the decision not to wear my raincoat. I didn’t have a hat, so I tied a thick, clean sock around my forehead to keep the rain from running down my face. It didn’t sound sound very cool, but hey, I was deep in the woods.
We started off. As we had been doing for several days, the rest of the group started off at their normal pace and left me to my own slower pace. They would stop at lunch and wait for me to catch up.
But after that initial send off, Lunchtime came and went and I still hadn’t seen them. I felt a little worried, but I assumed that they didn’t want to stop in the rain and eat, that they must have kept going. So I pulled out a granola bar and ate while I walked and listened to the rain.
At each interesting spot on the trail my concern grew. When I had to climb over a giant tree that was across the path, when I had to cross a small torrent of a creek with a rough log as a bridge, and when I reached the most beautiful view so far – the Bears Den Scenic Lookout.
I knew I was getting close to the hostel. I’d have been hiking all day, about eight hours. Unfortunately, no one else seemed crazy enough to hike today so there had been no one to ask about where I was or how far there was to go. But I finally reached the turn off to the hostel. Seeing the sign gave me a boost of energy to get there in the hopes of finding my friends. But my feet and my pack were getting heavy and the sun was going down. The rain was turning cooler.
If the hostel wasn’t so close, I would have put up my tent, started a fire, and changed out of my wet clothes. Luckily, I didn’t have to do that.
By the time I arrived at the hostel, my body was shaking from the cold. The owners appeared at the front desk and didn’t miss a beat. They lifted the backpack off my back
Photo by me of my friends just after they arrived at the Bears Den Scenic Lookout and were glad to see me. Taking in the view.
and pushed me toward the showers.
“Have you seen my friends?” I asked them through chattering teeth.
“They’re back at the other campsite. They’ve been calling all day to see if you arrived. Now, get a hot shower. We have the fire going and we’ll tell you all about it when you get out.”
A wave of relief washed over me. They were okay! After worrying all day, I could finally relax. When I got out of the shower I found my wet boots sitting by the lit fireplace. I purchased a family box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and ate every bite.
Then I cozied up by the fire and watched a father and son play chess, and listened to a pair of Swedish teenagers tell me about their road trip through the U.S.
I was glad to know my friends were safely at the campsite. They had turned off at the three-mile turn because they felt they couldn’t make fifteen miles that day. They had dropped their gear at the campsite and ran back up to the trail thinking that I wouldn’t be so close as to pass by yet. When I didn’t appear after an hour, they had run all the way back to our overnight location to see if I was still there.
The next late afternoon, they found me lying in my hammock at the overlook reading a book. We smiled and hugged. As we talked, Carol handed me her water bottle. Curious, I took a drink and found out it was grape soda.
“We got hungry at lunch and used the cell phone to order pizza delivered at the side of the road,” Carol told me. “These cell phones are awesome.”
We all laughed and I took another drink of grape soda.
Even though we had gotten separated, I was glad of that day I had hiked alone. So many things I had done with others and this time, I had accomplished something on my own.
Author Bio
Sonja Dewing earned her degree at UNM focusing on journalism and professional writing. She’s published in national magazines, has won numerous awards for her creative writing, and won best author in New Mexico by the New Mexico Entertainment Awards in 2024.
She made the leap into full-time writing in 2014 when she quit her job and ventured off into the Amazon river basin. This 9-week journey took her on an exploration of Inca history, myths, and sites that fueled a creative imagination and led to an award-winning series of fantasy novels in the Idol Makers series.
Currently working on her memoir that covers her life as a woman in the Civil Air Patrol – from learning to fly at seventeen years-old to commanding a Cadet Leadership School, Chasing the Horizon: How I built my life with Courage, Coffee, and Saying Yes promises to be an unique look at the Auxiliary of the Air Force from a young woman’s lens.
This story originally appeared in the Winter 18/19 issue of Creative Nonfiction.
“Hold your breath, or the fumes will choke you.”
My mother held a lowball glass to her chest, vodka glinting in the morning light, and said, “Then you swallow.” She raised her chin, peered from under thick glasses, and tossed a shot down her gullet.
She said we should take a break from chores. We were living in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, a suburb of Albuquerque. My stepfather, Gary, was not home.
She breathed through her nose and hissed out: “Then you take a breath.”
She poured another shot over ice and said, “Now it’s your turn.” She held out the glass.
I grimaced, but I also felt grown-up, mostly because I was thirteen and drinking booze was something grown-ups did. Also, the emotional and rational parts of my brain didn’t know each other yet.
“Oh, come on. Don’t be afraid. I want you to know how to act when you’re older, when you start going to parties.”
I took the glass, held it to my nose, sniffed.
“Don’t smell it. Hold your breath.”
I shrugged, sipped, gagged, and nearly dropped the glass. “Ohhh!” I hammed it up, gaped my mouth toward heaven, and said, “That’s terrible!”
My mother laughed. “You breathed in the fumes. That’s what makes you choke, not the taste.” She poured another shot and drank it demurely, as if she was having a spot of tea. “Would you like more?”
I shrugged, an ambivalent alcoholic-in-training. I would like to forget this, but I can’t. My mother was lonely and on the verge of her second divorce, this time from my stepdad. He would soon start fooling around with a sad woman whose son went to my brother’s karate class. My mother was drinking to forget her current reality. I took another drink, and the frigid spirits burned, an ice-cold flame, but the second time, I didn’t gag. I was a natural.
“It’s not so bad, right?”
This was a life lesson, not unlike end table dusting, window washing, laundry folding, and toilet scrubbing. Drinking would become our ritual.
A little while later, my mother proclaimed, “Girl, you need to learn to dance!”
She thought I should know the mambo, cumbia, merengue, and her beloved salsa. She also deemed the ability to incite a conga line a valuable life lesson. She turned on Paul Simon’s Graceland, an album that still signifies for me the beginning of a good time.
• • •
Ta-na-na. Ta-na-na-na. Soft voices drifted through the room, the distant hum of South Africans releasing themselves from the shackles of apartheid. My mother and I danced—no, bumped into walls—as we congaed to Paul Simon’s “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes.” We stumbled through the halls, cha-cha-ing past the vacuum. And why were we supposed to vacuum? Why always on a Saturday morning? Because. What if company came and an end table was not dusted? The shame.
Illustration by Stephen KnezovichMy mother danced toward the kitchen to refresh our glasses. She said, “Loosen up, baby girl.”
She grew me inside her body; seed of me sprouting into an amphibious blob, I was nourished by her, created inside her, but being raised by her is something I want to forget, something I fear I will repeat—because I am a mother now, too.
Paul Simon sang, the horn section blared, and my mother found me, clumsily performing a kick-ball-change step. She cackled and said, “That is not the beat, girl! You are dancing to the horns.”
Something I didn’t realize then but I know now: my mom was hammered. Also, I liked drinking vodka and cavorting in my PJs way more than scrubbing toilets. Who among my middle-school classmates would be allowed to drink vodka on a Saturday morning? None of them! I felt special and happy.
My mother coached me: “Lissen for the drums!”
I shook my hips and felt electric as Paul Simon sang, “Oooh ooohh ooooohhh.” One of my knees jutted left; the other bent low to the ground. Even though I couldn’t hear the beat she wanted me to hear, I did hear the garage door. I was pretty sure my stepdad wouldn’t like that I was drinking. An eighth-grader drinking vodka at ten in the morning—it’s not normal. But I was loyal to my mother, to the idea of divine motherhood. The archetype of mother—ever-loving, ever-giving, ever-nurturing—doesn’t mesh, not even a little, with who my mom was, but I clung to it for years. That was easier than realizing she was a flawed human. I worshipped my mom, yet living with her sometimes felt like watching a speeding train barrel through everything on its tracks. All she had to say was wooden spoon, her threat for spanking, and I stepped in line. Her threat of corporal punishment, like slugging down shots of vodka, is at war with the archetype, but never mind that. Fear, love—these two emotions cause similar sensations inside my body: the quaking, the quickening heart, the lightheadedness.
I didn’t question whether my family was the kind of organization that deserved my loyalty. I loved my family because it was mine. Logic never stood a chance. My stepfather marched into the living room and lowered the volume as my mother demonstrated a correct kick-ball-change. I froze mid-shimmy.
“Ezra, what are you doing?”
The lowball glass dripped with sweat; vodka vapors seeped from our skin.
“Are you two drunk?”
Silence. How many neurons in my brain didn’t properly fire because I was tanked?
“Mom says I have a high tolerance.”
Gary stomped around the living room and said, “I can’t believe you two.”
My mother interrupted, pushing out words as if they were covered in glue: “It’s OK. Jennifer ish my liddle dringking buddy. She doesn’t get drunk without adult supervish-uhn.”
The Man Who Came to Dinner
Jennifer Jordan
This essay originally appeared on This American Life, National Public Radio, 23 December 2007.
When she was in kindergarten, Jennifer, along with her brother and mother, was held hostage by an armed gunman for four days. Their father was a drug dealer and had disappeared with a bunch of cocaine that belonged to someone else. The gunman had been sent to hold the family hostage until he returned the drugs. But the gangsters didn’t count on Jennifer’s mother being so tough—frightening enough, in fact, to almost make the guy leave. And not only that: Her mother was so composed that Jennifer and her brother never even knew they were being held hostage (14 minutes).
Jennifer Jordan works as an Open Educational Resource (OER) Librarian in the College of University Libraries and Learning Sciences at the University of New Mexico. She is also the principal investigator on a federal open textbook pilot grant focused on growing the use of Open Education in New Mexico, an English teacher who developed OER curriculum with her peers at Central New Mexico Community College, and a creative writer who writes essays and poems. Here’s my website if they’re interested: https://jenniferjordanwrites.com
