Announcing the Winner of the 2023 Older Writers Grant

The Speculative Literature Foundation is pleased to announce Jen OConnor as the winner of the 2023 Older Writers Grant.

The Older Writers Grant intends to support writers over the age of 50 who are just starting their work at the professional level.

OConnor’s winning piece is called “Second Hand Salvation.”

Jen OConnor’s poetry and fiction have been published in Two Hawks Quarterly, Saved Objects, Imagine Magazine, Iris Brown Lit Mag, Medusa’s Laugh Press, Persimmon Tree, Impossible Archetype, London Journal of Fiction, American Writers Review, Sinister Wisdom, Ravensperch, Written Tales Chapbook IX, ImageOutWrite!, and The Journal of Expressive Writing. Her work has been featured in many spoken-word performances in Los Angeles. She was just named a finalist in the New Letters magazine annual Robert Day contest for Fiction.

Jen is also a playwright. Her full-length comedy, The Girl Who Would Be King, garnered Backstage and LA Weekly awards, was winner of Chicago’s Pride Films & Plays Women’s Words contest, and is published and licensed by Stage Rights. Jen’s short comedy, Taken For A Ride, was recently published in Fresh Words Magazine’s Contemporary One-Act Plays. Dressing Robbie Temple was a semi-finalist in the Ashland New Plays Festival and was awarded a reading in the #ShePersisted Festival of the LGBTQ Coalescence Theatre. Gayby’s Playdate, winner of the LGBT Festival in LA, was produced around the country and in Seoul, South Korea.

Jen holds an MA in English from St. Louis University and an MFA in Theatre from Southern Illinois University. She worked happily for many years as a writer at Walt Disney Imagineering in Los Angeles.