The Short Story
Cordelia Jensen graduated with a MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2012. Cordelia has three verse novels: Skyscraping (Philomel/Penguin), The Way the Light Bends (Philomel/Penguin) and Every Shiny Thing (Amulet/Abrams), which she co-authored with VCFA classmate Laurie Morrison. Skyscraping was named an American Library Association’s 2016 Best Book for Young Adults, a Los Angeles Public Library Best Book for Teens and a 2016 NCTE Childrens’ Notable Verse Novel. Every Shiny Thing was a South Carolina Junior Book Award Nominee and Georgia Book Award Nominee. Cordelia has taught creative writing in a variety of settings, including Bryn Mawr College, Germantown Friends School, The Writing Barn and The Kelly Yang Project. She currently teaches verse novel specific classes for The Highlights Foundation and freelance edits verse novels. She also runs a kids’ literary journal called the Mt. Airy Musers. Cordelia is represented by Liza Fleissig at the Liza Royce Agency.
The Longer Story
I started my first diary on November 6, 1987. And I have been scribbling things down ever since. I remember once saying to a friend in middle school, “Wouldn’t it be the coolest thing in the world to, like, be able to write an essay about each of your friends?” She looked at me like I was crazy. But, well, here I am writing about teenagers.
For a long time I worked with teenagers. Along with my MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults, I have a Masters of Education in Secondary School Counseling from Shippensburg University. And for eleven summers I worked as a camp counselor for a very special summer program called Longacre Leadership. I also attended Longacre as a kid and it is where I met my husband Jon Jensen (that’s another, longer story.)
Recently, my son asked me, “Mom, do you know why people like to do what they are good at doing?” And I thought about how long I have loved to write and how long I have been fascinated by kids and how, now, I feel so lucky to actually have a book deal and be able to write professionally for a group of readers I have always loved to watch and interact with. I answered him this way, “the more you like something, the more you practice doing it.”
I should have said earlier, yes, I grew up in New York City. However, after graduation I had the fortune to attend Kenyon College in rural Ohio where I was able to major in creative writing, which I adored. And some of the lines from Skyscraping I can trace back to writing I did in college. All this is to say, I practiced what I loved to do for a long time. And I am practicing still.
My daughter says she’s going to be a songwriter and a poet when she grows up. I find her in her room sometimes, bits of papers scattered around her, singing loud with her own words in her hand. I hope thirty years from now she is out there, somewhere, practicing still.
Creative play is the thing of life.
