Jasminne Mendez

Jasminne Mendez is a two-time Pura Belpre Honor Award Author and an NAACP
Image Award Nominee. She is a Dominican-American poet, translator, playwright, audio
book narrator and award-winning author of several books for children and adults.
Including the middle grade novel in verse Aniana del Mar Jumps In (Dial). Her other
books have received prizes from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Writer’s League of
Texas and the International Latino Book Awards. She has had poetry and essays
published in numerous journals and anthologies including The Acentos Review, The
New England Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, and others. She is an MFA graduate
of the creative writing program at the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran
University and a University of Houston alumni. She is the Program Director for the
literary arts non-profit Tintero Projects and she lives and works in Houston, TX.

Mentor. Workshops and classes in nonfiction and poetry.

Statement: “In her book Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of
Freedom, bell hooks stated ‘As a classroom community, our capacity to generate
excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s
voices, in recognizing one another’s presence’ (8). It is with this holistic approach to
teaching and learning that I enter all my classrooms and workshops. I believe that
students’ personal growth as writers occurs when they are encouraged to ask questions
and remain curious and connected to the material they are learning. In my workshops, I
employ a combination of strategies found in Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process
alongside the pedagogical tenets set forth in Felicia Chavez’s recent book The Anti-
Racist Writing Workshop. Chavez states: ‘The anti-racist writing workshop is a
pedagogy of deep listening – to oneself, to one’s workshop leader, and to every
member of the collective – ensuring equal access to voice’ (55). It is through the act of
deep listening to what the student writer wants to accomplish with their work, that the
work can truly become what it was meant to be. In my courses and workshops, no
matter the content, students are active participants in the teaching and learning process
and all voices are valued and heard. I believe in meeting students where they are and
pushing them forward with enough rigor and compassion to help them see themselves
as writers in order to reach their personal, professional, and artistic goals whether they
intend to pursue writing as a profession or not.”