Thank You Jenny!
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It’s a bittersweet time of transition at the Loft. For 16 years, Jenny Dodgson served the Loft and our teaching artist community. She is moving on to an exciting new position with the State Arts Board. During her tenure, she has consistently brought excellence and an unwavering commitment to the writers in our community. As she departs the Loft, we want to take this opportunity to celebrate her many accomplishments and just say thank you for her years of service.
Here are some tributes collected from her Loft colleagues.
Jenny gave her all to the education program at the Loft and oversaw some important programmatic evolutions and expansions in the program—including the highly sought after opportunities for writers to advance their goals to develop a manuscript with the support of a mentor, what we now call the Year Long Writing Projects and the creation along with David Mura of the BIPOC Writers class. In good and challenging times, Jenny's hallmark was responsiveness to both teaching artists and participants. That's a huge number of relationships and Jenny showed up to them with patience and understanding. Her fingerprints are on the hearts and professional paths of many writers and teaching artists in this community. The shout outs from Loft staff, former board members, teaching artists, and class participants are so well deserved! Thank you for your service, Jenny! We wish you all the best in your next professional adventure!
–Arleta Little
As a young woman fresh out of college and new to teaching, Jenny made me feel so capable and equipped and empowered. Her boundless compassion and positivity played a huge role in why I continued to come back to teach for the Loft year after year. Jenny does not talk down to anyone or make them feel small. She listens and supports in the way only a great leader can. We will miss her deeply, but are thrilled for her to embark on her next adventure.
–Blythe Baird
Jenny is so capable, caring, and dedicated. She saw a lot during her tenure at the Loft, but always had the humor and grace to keep her eye on the importance of her work. Most of all, Jenny was a relationship builder. She garnered trust and respect from those she worked most closely with and it would not be an exaggeration that her legacy has lifted, inspired, and developed thousands of writers.
–Chris Jones
Thank you Jenny for the dedication, wisdom, humor, and thoughtfulness you brought to the education program and organization as a whole. I learned so much from you about what it means to be a leader, a writer-educator-practitioner, a caring colleague and human. I am so grateful for our work together and overlap at the Loft. You built strong relationships across the Twin Cities and beyond, and your work has paved the way for us to continue giving a voice and platform to some of the most pressing issues of our time and reaching diverse teaching artists and audiences. Your energy at Open Book will be missed, but I can’t wait to see what this next chapter holds for you! (But come back for a class or two or teach for us anytime!!!)
–Marianne Manzler
But don’t just take the Loft staff’s word for it. Here are some heartfelt testimonials from the teaching artists who have had the privilege of working with her over the years.
Jenny is insightful, generous, and smart. She made me feel valued as a teacher and a writer, and I admired how she managed to understand and prioritize Loft students, teaching artists, and the community at large, all at the same time.
–Chelsea DesAutels
Jenny was such a pleasure to work with. She’s quick to respond and so supportive when issues arise. As I live far from Minneapolis, I teach remotely. I never had the pleasure of meeting her in person, but I was so appreciative how she held casual online chats so I could get to know her and my fellow teaching artists. But my favorite thing about Jenny? Her newsletters! She is so funny and unlike other newsletters, I always open it right away. I’m sorry I’ll miss hearing about Gary next spring.
–Jennifer S Brown
Thank you so much to Jenny for being a rock solid cornerstone of the Loft's hospitality toward its students and teaching artists. I will forever appreciate Jenny's enthusiasm, optimism, organization, and talents wrangling the many, many moving parts of leading a dynamic education program that has meant a lot to me for twenty years as a student, mentee, mentor, and teacher with the Loft!
–Sun Yung Shin
It's been such a delight to work with Jenny as a teaching artist: to discuss and hone my classes, share news, and be inspired. I wish her all the best in the next phase.
–Katie Heartfield
Jenny was and is always so gracious and supportive of the teaching artists and the students. She is all about the work and writers becoming the best version of themselves not what publishers and the powers that be think they should be. I will miss her kind and forthright manner and I wish her much success in her new adventures!
–Cynthia Holm
Jenny has been a reliable, encouraging presence at the Loft. Even via the internet, her warmth and intelligence came through. When I approached her with problems, she was thoughtful and constructive. Thank you, Jenny.
–Aurelia Wills
I am writing to express my deepest gratitude to Jenny for her support of writers and teaching artists in the Twin Cities community and beyond. In particular, I find that Jenny has a rare gift for supporting emerging writers and teaching artists. Her support, in no uncertain terms, launched my career in the literary arts. If it weren't for her faith in me, I would not be the writer or educator I am today. I am ever grateful to her.
–Kathryn Savage
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with Jenny over the past couple of years and have much gratitude to her for welcoming me as new instructor to The Loft! I really appreciated her passion for inclusivity and anti-racism in education as well as her gentle, effective, diplomatic way of managing a wide array of matters and coordinating a myriad of things. Wishing her the very best!
—Kimberly Lee
It isn't hyperbole to state that I am an author because Jenny gave me permission to try. She is in the acknowledgments of my first book, and is the reason I started teaching at the Loft in the first place. Jenny's optimism and belief in writers is rare and beautiful and I will deeply feel her absence! Best wishes and all my love, Jenny!
—Nicole Kronzer
Jenny’s warm and welcoming personality evoked a spirit of possibility. She always inspired me and I am so grateful for the opportunity to work with her.
—Marie Olofsdotter
Jenny helped me come into my own as a teacher. I taught my first class at The Loft when I was in college and her guidance and support helped me to not only keep coming back to The Loft, but to continue my teaching and writing in many parts of my life!
—Elizabeth Yost
Jenny has been a dream to work with—easy, encouraging, flexible, always open to new ideas. I loved her newsletters (especially hearing what she was reading that month) and appreciated everything about how she honored us and the rest of the writing community at the Loft.
—Mary Carroll Moore
Thank you for all of your support over the years, Jenny! Wishing you the best in your next adventure.
—Troy Wilderson
I'm sad to see Jennifer Dodgson leave the Loft and I wish her all the best at her new position at MSAB. I've so appreciated Jenny's work as Education Director over the years. She recruited me to teach at the Loft to help increase the diversity of student enrollment. But when the regular Loft Class in memoir that I taught didn't result in a racially diverse class, I told her we had to do something different, and we began talking about a class specifically for BIPOC writers. Jenny was so open to my ideas of how to institute the class and really pushed to make it happen. So in order to recruit BIPOC writers we hired BIPOC writers/activists in the community to spread the word about the class; we had three preview classes, one through the North Side U of MN office and the Urban League Center, one thru CHAT, one at a cafe in South Minneapolis. Jenny helped make it possible through a grant that the class could be offered free of charge and the first class we had 85 BIPOC students with 144 signed up. Then when some conservative flame thrower wrote the MSAB that the class discriminated against white people, Jenny was instrumental in helping the Loft and the class navigate through that morass. I taught the class for two years, and then it became a revolving class in the Loft schedule. The class has helped connect so many BIPOC writers to the Loft—and none of that would have happened without Jenny's vision and efforts and steadfast belief in doing the work necessary to make the Loft a more diverse organization.
—David Mura
Jenny’s approach toward working with teaching artists motivated me to continue teaching writing in community. She was open to our ideas and approaches. She shares enthusiasm and passion. She was always excited about what we had to say, which re-energized my own love of this work.
—Freesia McKee
Oh, Jenny! You were always available at the drop of an email with answers, help and encouragement. You made me feel not just welcomed, but valued, and I was so pleased when you took me on to teach memoir writing—which became one of the most fulfilling things I've done. Thank you so much! And all the very best in your new endeavor. You'll be missed at the Loft, but you will be great in your new job as well.
—Laurie Hertzel
Jenny has been the kind of boss and colleague one is grateful for, the longer a person teaches. I've taught at the Loft since the first year it was invented, and I have worked with an array of lovely folks. Jenny has been respectful, clear, forceful when she needs to be, has honored the Loft's path to pro-active anti-racism work and insisted to the teachers she selects that they show their commitment to the Loft's policy. She respects good teaching, which sounds like something simple, but it is not. She's been a professional. She is not passive-aggressive, she is focused, and the Minnesota State Arts Board is VERY lucky to have hired her. I wish her all good things in her life.
—Deborah Keenan
Jenny, way back in 2007, I had the great pleasure of having you in my Discovering the Writing World class, and you were the ideal student: excited, curious, dedicated, and inclusive. Little did I know that I would get to work for you when you became the Education Director, where you would bring those exact same attributes—and so much more—to the role and to The Loft. By then I’d moved out of state and therefore our correspondence shifted to your wonderful newsletters and emails, which always brought a smile to my face. In particular, I was so impressed by the way you pulled us all through the pandemic with your boundless energy and optimism. Here’s to your next adventure: Minnesota State Arts Board is so very lucky to have amazing you!
—Heather Goodman
Good luck at your new position Jen! You were such a great person to work for and I wish you all the success at the Minnesota Arts Board!!!
—Michael Gorrie
Jenny was the best. She was always very easy to work with, communicated clearly, cheerleaded undersung writers, and advocated for equity and diversity and helped us push that conversation to the forefront of our pedagogies. She took a chance on me as a young teacher with very little experience about eight years ago, and she was always so supportive and encouraging of what I was trying to do with my classes. She helped me hone my class descriptions and always steered me toward a more generous, open-hearted direction. The behind-the-scenes work she did to glue the place together and keep us all connected? I can't even fathom it. She was so supportive and easy to work with and just plain wonderful.
—Josh Cook
Jenny has an amazing ability to make writers/teachers like myself feel appreciated, wanted, and respected, and in my short time knowing her she impressed me as a valiant champion for writers.
—David Bushman
Her words of encouragement, thoughtful feedback, and kindhearted nature were always so appreciated. I always felt my creative visions were honored by Jenny, and I'm grateful for that as well. I'm wishing her so well, and she'll be missed.
—Jinnene Foster
We’ll miss you Jenny! Thanks for all you’ve given to the Loft over the years.